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Sustainable architecture is a tool for designing and constructing buildings in order to reduce the negative effects of the building on the environment and to meet the current needs without ignoring the rights of the next generation. The increasing interest of green buildings in Egypt reflects the awareness of governments, local organizations and architects of the importance of incorporating and applying the comprehensive approach of sustainability in the field of architectural design. The adopting of sustainable buildings rating system is one of the goals of sustainable development in Egypt. Although Egypt adopted a local rating system for sustainable buildings which is "Green Pyramids Rating System", there is no approved buildings by using GPRS however the density of construction activities in Egypt. The literature review shows that, the current sustainable buildings rating system in Egypt cannot be used to conduct a comprehensive assessment during the early stages of architectural design and to reevaluate the building after the construction process. In addition to the administrative obstacles and the negative aspects of GPRS, the research problem includes also the technical challenges and the problems related to people who do the evaluation. This paper investigates the development of sustainable buildings evaluation process in Egypt and the current institutions responsible for evaluating the sustainability of buildings. The main potentials and available chances for developing sustainable architectural design have been clarified. On the other hand, the current challenges which obstacle rating the sustainable buildings in Egypt were clarified. The present paper recommends some suggestions to achieve comprehensive for buildings in terms of environmental, economic and social issues and to encourage the development of materials and construction systems which are environmentally friendly [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term of sustainability goes beyond applying green architecture strategies. Sustainability refers to techniques which conserve resources, preserve the natural environment, protect local population, and support the principle of justice and equity. Therefore, the achievement of sustainability in the field of construction requires great and multi faces effort to solve the social, economic, and environmental problems. At the local level (Egypt), although there are serious steps toward more sustainable construction industry, many research studies confirmed that the already used system currently in Egypt to rate the sustainable buildings (Green Pyramid Rating system, GPRS) needs to be developed in order to be more effective and usable. There is a great need for developing a rating system for sustainable hotels which can classify hotels in Egypt in terms of sustainability in a comprehensive way starting from early design stages and continue to evaluate the building during and after the construction stage. Therefore, it is necessary to benefit from the systems which are used globally for rating sustainable buildings in order to create a local system by modification of the already existed criteria and to add new criteria in order to achieve a system which meets the local requirements. This research paper suggests a sustainability rating system which classifies hotels in the southern region of Upper Egypt based on improving the local system (GPRS) to be used for classifying hotels particularly because hotels are considered from the most energy consuming buildings and they generate a huge amount of wastes in addition to the increasing awareness of users who consider the sustainable and environment friendly hotels as preferred destinations. The suggested rating system which is Green Pyramid Rating System for hotels, (GPRS-H) is based on using the criteria of the German system (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen, DGNB( by modifying them to be more suitable for the local environment in Egypt in addition to excluding certain criteria which are not consistent to the local context. Additionally, the principle of participation has been applied here to help in determining logic relative weights for the criteria and indicators of the suggested system through conducting a questionnaire for the experts in the field of sustainable buildings. The suggested rating system includes six categories of criteria. The environmental quality occupies the first rank in terms of relative weight, then the economic quality, social and cultural quality, technical quality, planning and construction quality, and site quality. Each category includes some criteria which can be evaluated by using certain indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the scientific revolution and technological development led to the development of architectural trends, where the structure of mosques was affected globally, regionally and locally in terms of design concept, which led to creativity in thinking and innovation in the design of mosques, where the environmental and physical characteristics of the mosque remained constant on the importance of the mosque and its requirements as a place With the change in the concept of design, personality and architectural identity, and the relationship between the mosque and the environment of different urban areas, also led some factors as (environment, society, economy) to convert elements and vocabulary of mosques, these paper aims to read the critical analysis of the impact of the era variables and the sustainable architecture trends to design the mosque concept, monitoring, and analyze and evaluate architectural transformations with the integration between forms, spaces, and the meanings of symbolic expressions, through the elements and vocabulary of the mosques structure types, its role and mission in the Islamic city, also study the principles of the mosques design and its development through (plans, elevations, structural system, details) to derive architectural values and principles and integrate them into a modern architectural style to express the Islamic architectural personality. As an attempt to present an architectural character, values, concepts, aesthetic, social, cultural and environmental standards according to the nature of each society, to explore new horizons for the future sustainability of the concept of mosque design, the research relies on some descriptive methodological methods based on information gathering and highlighting the theoretical backgrounds of the different trends, A comparative analytical approach to the monitoring and analysis of case study samples using of statistical analysis, the results are extracted and graphically illustrated by the graph method and charts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]