Residential towers design with an emphasis on social sustainability criteria

The subject of housing has always been one of the important subjects of human societies and given historical, social, climatic and technological facilities and conditions it has resulted in the creation of various patterns and methods of habitation. Housing is the foundation of cultural and economic vitality and it is a significant factor in the life quality. With the emergence of industrial revolution in 18th and 19th centuries and technological development, such inventions and factors as industrial development, population growth and urbanization as well as the increase of modern architectural technologies and construction industry evolved and as a result, the methods of habitation and architectural methods gained a new form. Following these evolutions, cities grew faster and the need to consider vertical development of cities and societies paved the ground for the evolution and development of residential towers in contemporary forms. Moreover, in 20th century, such factors as the necessity of more land use, people’s demand for living and work in city centers, etc. necessitated the construction of high buildings in big cities more than ever. The concept of sustainable development is an important change in understanding the relationship between human being and environment and humans with each other, the aspect of sustainable social development has not received much attention. Social sustainability involves the way the people, societies and communities live together, achieve development goals (selected for themselves) and understand the Physical borders and their territory as an integrated whole. Based on this definition, social sustainability combines political and social principles such as justice and health to the subjects related to participation, requirement, social capital, economy, environment and recently the concept of happiness, welfare and life quality. One of important issues in residential high buildings is social sustainability. Social behavior and interactions of residents in these places are under the influence of different factors. In designing mass complexes such as residential towers, division of private and public spaces and providing security in private space of residents is an important point. Designing high – rise buildings where there are many families with different cultures in a collective territory is a difficult job, because the architect must consider the architecture proportional to the living condition of different groups, so that social sustainability is implemented in the residential environment. The main concern of this study is emphasis on the aspect of social sustainability and studying it in residential towers. Based on what said above, the present study tries to investigate the aspects of social sustainability development and its impact in residential towers. In this paper, various aspects of sustainable development with social approach in design of residential buildings will be discussed. The research method is a descriptive analysis using library resources. Designing a residential tower is to establish a strong link between residents and natural environment which this link caused by trying to find identity or in other meaning sense of belonging to a place