Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Socio-environmental sustainability in traditional courtyard houses of Iran and China Farzaneh Soflaei a, ⁎ , Mehdi Shokouhian b , Wenyi Zhu c a School of Architecture and Planning, Morgan State University, Baltimore, United States b Department of Civil Engineering, Morgan State University, Baltimore, United States c School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Socio-environmental sustainability Traditional courtyard houses Hot-dry climate Cold-dry climate Iran China ABSTRACT Sustainable development that conceptually can be divided into the following parts: environmental, social and economic, is a pattern of resource use, which aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come in future. This paper is a comparative study on the socio-environmental sustainability in traditional courtyard houses in Iran and China, as two of the ancient civilizations in the world. The aim is to investigate the potential of traditional courtyard houses in responding to environmental challenges alongside social norms over a long period of time. To achieve this purpose, social and environmental dimensions of the sustainability as well as the main elements of traditional courtyard houses in Iran and China are identified. Then, the way these elements have contributed to the social and environmental sustainability of heritage settlements are described, analyzed, and compared through library and field survey studies. Results of this research show that Iranian and Chinese traditional courtyard houses were designed based on a careful attention to climatic requirements in their socio-cultural context, in order to provide both physical and mental comforts for residents. As conclusion, some socio- environmental design principles are extracted, as lessons learned from the past, which can be considered in designing of contemporary sustainable residential buildings in Iran and China. These design patterns, can be generalized to all cases with similar climatic conditions, in order to save more energy as well as enhancing social values in mentioned areas. 1. Introduction Climate change is a defining challenge for the 21st century and the construction sector as a whole, buildings demand 34% of the world energy which is even more than industry and transportation energy demands [1]. Buildings offer the greatest potential for achieving significant greenhouse gas emission reductions, at least cost. China and Iran, as two developing countries with GDP per capita of 14107, 17251 Int$ in 2015, have 34%, 41% building energy demand, respectively [2]. Fig. 1a shows energy consumption by sectors in the world, China, and Iran which can be clearly observed the importance of saving energy in buildings compared with other sectors. Fig. 1b shows that in both China and Iran, heating and cooling are the most energy consumers in the building sector with 54% and 61% of energy consumption, respectively [3]. Therefore efficiency in heating and cooling in the building sector have profound impact on saving energy in building sector.. The significant consumption of energy in the building sector causes a considerable CO2 emission. China is now the second largest building energy user, as well as the biggest CO2 emitter in the world. It is ranked 1st in residential and 3rd in commercial energy consumption [4]. On the other hand, Iran as a developing country has higher CO2 emission per capita compared with China. In fact, CO2 emission per capita in both countries are rapidly growing, and the latest data exhibits that they are higher than the average world CO2 emission per capita with 6.7 for China, and 7.8 for Iran [2] (Fig. 2). Thus, this is necessary to pay more attention to energy efficiency in the building sector using renew- able energies and passive design strategies for heating, cooling and ventilation, in mentioned countries.. Nowadays, the concept of sustainable development is defined as development that satisfies the needs of the present without compro- mising the ability of future generations to satisfy theirs [5,6]. It has been discussed in terms of three issues as economic, environmental and social [7,8], and has been developed by some scholars to include a fourth dimension of culture [9,10]. This research specifically focuses on interaction between social and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2016.09.130 Received 20 September 2015; Received in revised form 24 September 2016; Accepted 29 September 2016 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: farzaneh.soflaei@morgan.edu (F. Soflaei). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews xx (xxxx) xxxx–xxxx 1364-0321/ © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Available online xxxx Please cite this article as: Soflaei, F., Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2016.09.130