Sustainable Strategies of Urban Planning

Ecosystem degradation and environmental urban development create a new trend in the context of global ecological crisis. This trend involves the need to shift urban facilities to sustainable development, which in turn is linked to the necessity to modernize urban environment in the view of comfort, economy, and ecological compatibility. The design of sustainable cities plays a natural catalytic role for change and improvement of the environment quality. This paper analyses sustainable development strategies and methodological principles of sustainable architecture in particular, which served as a basis to define a set of core principles of establishing architectural solutions of energy-efficient buildings such as urban, architectural and planning, design concepts as well as the principles of the use of renewable energy. The project of energy-efficient school in Gaziantep, Turkey, being the sustainable architectural model, was used as an example to show the application of the methodology and demonstrate the comprehensive integration of engineering, architectural and energy-efficient solutions into the facility in question. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.