Phd in PLANNING, DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE TECHNOLOGY

Thesis title: Agile Methodology as a Transdisciplinary Retrofitting Approach for Built Environment in Traditional Settlements in Mediterranean Region

Traditional settlements are societies and villages that emerged vernacularly; they have a distinct architectural typology and urban tissue, transferring knowledge between generations is a significant character. Their inhabitants have significant levels of agreement about their social qualities, homogeneity, solving any problem in their ways. They use the available resources, local materials, and the available technologies to form their shelters concerning the climate, security, political and religious precepts, and aesthetic values. Their buildings achieve cultural, anthropological, social, and economic needs. Several studies found common ground between Egypt and Italy regarding the impact of Arab and Roman cultures and the influence of the Mediterranean climate. This research has chosen a common traditional settlement pattern to foster a new approach. Based on several factors, namely, adjacent to the Mediterranean sea, Mediterranean climate, population density, buildings number, predominately rural, land use is dominated by agriculture, and they have the same small-dimension economy of agricultural activities, and finally, it makes sense the Author is Egyptian, and he studies in Itlay. Moreover, the comparative analysis between contexts enriches the findings, and otherwise, they could represent the Mediterranean Region. Many studies highlighted the transformation of these traditional settlements in Egypt and Italy because of several causes, such as the socio-economic transformations, that led to emerging newly built environment patterns facing environmental challenges and led to more energy consumption which contributes significantly to climate change. That requires transdisciplinary retrofitting interventions in these traditional contexts, considering evolving all stakeholders those who have the interest and influence in, not only technical experts like (architects, urban planners, economists, environmentalists, sociologists) and the local community but also decision-makers who have the power to implement, as what has been emphasized in the literature. Thus, this study aims to provide a transdisciplinary framework to organize the collaborative work among the stakeholders, which led them to implement efficient strategies to retrofit the built environment. The transdisciplinary framework will employ Agile Methodology (Agile Manifesto, 2001), which originated in 2001 under the software engineering domain. It efficiently organizes and manages the relations between teamwork; concerns produce products in the highest value and achieve client satisfaction and continuous acclimatization due to inputs fluctuations and variations. Likewise, this study argues that; it will provide the optimum framework to maximize relations efficiency between the stakeholders and provide criteria to select the teams under different circumstances and various projects. The framework has been implemented on two similar traditional settlement case studies, Lasaifar Albalad in the Delta Region in Egypt and Pontinia in the Lazio region in Italy. The provided framework has improved the participatory approach, enhanced communication, mitigated team conflict problems, and aligned versatile top-down and bottom-up stakeholders on the same high- power and high-interest zones. Moreover, the framework provided an actual retrofitting case study.