Human–Architecture–Environment Interaction Based on Seasonal Displacement in Traditional Medicine (Case Study: Housing in Iran’s Hot and Dry Climate)

Raeesi, Mohammad Mannan; Hayaty, Hamed; Amereh, Fatemeh

doi:10.30491/ijtmgh.2026.582723.1530

Human–Architecture–Environment Interaction Based on Seasonal Displacement in Traditional Medicine (Case Study: Housing in Iran’s Hot and Dry Climate)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mohammad Mannan Raeesi ¹

Hamed Hayaty ²

Fatemeh Amereh ³

¹ Faculty of Islamic Architecture, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.

² Ph.D. in Architecture, Assistant Professor, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.

³ MSc in Architecture, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.

10.30491/ijtmgh.2026.582723.1530

Abstract

Human beings have always sought ways to preserve their health through a preventive approach. One of the means of addressing health and preventing various diseases is to ensure it through environmental health and the effective relationship between residential and natural environments.
Part of the climatic strategies for organizing life and creating healthy living environments has been documented in medical texts from the Islamic period. Classical physicians regarded the preservation of human health as the primary goal of medicine and considered it dependent on the interaction and adaptation of human beings to the climatic environment, based on the structural correspondence between human temperament and the four elements of nature. The aim of this study is to examine the background of traditional climatic knowledge concerning the interaction between human beings and the natural and built environment, using a historical-interpretive method and drawing upon traditional medical texts.
The findings indicate that the medical foundations of climatic design based on seasonal displacement refer to such features as site selection, temporal regulation, vertical stratification, and spatial orientation. In this context, seasonal displacement, as a form of climatic lifestyle and climatic therapy, as well as intra-house seasonal displacement as an appropriate climatic strategy, can also be applied to help maintain health in contemporary houses.

Keywords

Residential architecture

traditional medicine

seasonal displacement

temporal regulation

site selection