Strong family ties built on the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah produce excellent foundation in forming a household which are constantly under the protection and blessing of Allah and in turn contribute to the overall health of a community. A dwelling filled with the remembrance of Allah will no doubt find an aura of peace and tranquillity. This is called a home, a place for a family to worship Allah, to relax body and mind, enjoy legitimate worldly delights, teach, learn and propagate the message of Islam. Therefore, provision and design of a dwelling should be considered important to make it a blessed home. This includes the provision of spaces for religious activities, daily basic chores of households, social production, reproduction hygiene needs, privacy and security. Cultural, religious and sustainable aspects of inhabitants should be considered in the planning and design process of a dwelling in the Malaysian context. The Syariah sources have provided basis for its design to conform to Islamic criteria, thereby facilitating various ibadah activities for the inhabitants and users. A review of theory and philosophy of dwelling from Islamic perspective is analysed to justify the comprehensive living approach as promoted by Islam. This paper aims to review literature pertaining to housing principles in Islam and to present basic principles for developing housing criteria based on Islamic teachings. � 2017 by MIP.

The Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) has outline steps to achieve sustainable development and environmentally friendly starting year 2014 which stipulated that all faculties and offices building to be incorporated with sustainable design features and occupants awareness toward energy efficiency building. However, the questions on the existing building design still ponders and requires a research on whether the implementation of the design has met the criteria to achieve energy efficiency building and does the adoption of passive design strategies, such as building orientation, windows size and control window system has taken all the consideration on the penetration of daylight into the building without compromising to the occupant visual comfort. A Qualitative survey with 60 respondents from five different departments has been conducted on the occupant�s perception toward visual comfort due to daylight quantity penetrated from window compare to the data analysis done from IES-Ve on daylighting quantity and quality of the selected departments. Finding from the survey shown that 61.2% of the respondents agreed that there is a visual discomfort from the windows of the office and 52.2% respondent agreed that tinted window reduce the penetration of daylight. Solutions from the literature review on integration of passive and active design strategies are proposed in the retrofitting of the building to harvest the natural lighting and increase the daylight quantity in the building. The research will be useful as basic recommendation on the retrofitting process to harvest the natural lighting and increase the energy efficiency in retrofitting the faculty and office building in USIM. � 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.

Natural daylight is a renewable energy source that is important in photobiology study which looks into the effect of light to living organism. Students' visual comfort satisfaction due to efficient daylight in a classroom are highlighted in the physical of the building and learning space such as windows and openings. One of the factor that influences the design of classrooms environmental condition. Environmental condition consideration includes the daylighting requirement for classrooms. Various standards and guidelines on daylighting consideration have been developed in Malaysia including the recommendation on Window-to-Floor Ratio (WFR) and illuminance level. However, the recommended WFR may not achieve the recommended illuminance level. This paper evaluates whether the recommended WFR design achieve the recommended acceptable illuminance level. Two classrooms in Kolej Permata Insan, Nilai, Negeri Sembilan with different orientation were selected for the study. Integrated Environmental Solution (IESVE) simulation software is used for daylight evaluation. The WFR of the two selected classrooms were set to the recommended 20%. Simulation results shows that the illuminance level for both classrooms are higher than recommended. The simulation also shows that the daylight distribution in the classrooms are not uniform, thus creating inefficient daylight condition. Therefore, the WFR recommends further studies with additional of daylighting design strategy considerations. � 2018 Web Portal IOP. All rights reserved.