'The Open Air Office' Climatic adaptation of the office building typology in the Mediterranean

The paper reports on a dissertation project undertaken at the Architectural Association School of architecture towards a Master's degree in Sustainable Environmental Design by the Author. The starting point for the research was the troubling common practice of office buildings in Israel - racing towards the tallest, highly mechanical and fully glazed buildings, scarcely applying any environmental considerations and occasionally using the local green point system code to render them as 'green'. This research aims at contextualizing the office building typology to the local Mediterranean climatic conditions of Israel; based on a theoretical framework and a detailed study of local common practices and climate, followed by an analytic optimization study, the 'Open Air Office' concept is introduced: one which uses an integrated environmental design approach to rethink some of the core values that drive office building designs in Israel today.