CLIMATE RESILIENCE OF SELF-BUILT HOUSING UNDER A HOT ARID CLIMATE; ALGERIA

Self-built housing remains a dominant response to the increasing urban population of the developing countries spanning from Asia to Africa and Latin America. Self-built housing still account for a large share of the housing production in Algeria. Under the hot and arid climate of southern Algeria, contemporary self-built houses seem to have little remaining of the traditional vernacular models, often recognized as well adapted to the environmental and climatic context. Comparatively, little is known about the contemporary architectural housing production and its thermal adaptation to the extremely hot local climate. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to examine and identify the bioclimatic attributes of the contemporary self-built houses in the desert city of Biskra, Algeria. For this purpose, one hundred individual houses were surveyed. Criteria included the house footprint, orientation, design and construction characteristics as well as the historical evolution of the built-up areas and space usage. A typo-morphological classification based on the house's footprint identified three main types. The bio-climatic adaptability of these models was first analyzed in qualitative terms. Then, a thermal simulation of the most recurrent and representative types was carried out. The results highlight the relatively good climatic adaptation of the contemporary self-built houses.