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.

Towns have historically been organized around their streets. Streets is the city's major public forum and its pattern is a major element of urban design. Streets in royal town often radiated from the nucleus of the town, which was usually the seat of political power or places of worship such as mosque or some structure of commercial or cultural significance such as the royal palace. The aim of this paper is to study the past and the present urban environment through a review of its traditional street within a historic royal town of Kuala Kangsar, Perak. It highlights the role of streets from the pre-colonial era to the present state. It also traces the transformation of physical elements which was influenced by the street pattern during the period of rapid urbanization as well as during colonial times in this heritage district. The study concludes that the role of traditional street in the Malay royal town that is rich with an intriguing mix of architectural styles is likely to have a significant impact on the overall appeal of a town. The morphological study shows that the evolution within the urban frame is influenced by the functions of the town and the geographical setting such as rivers. While the physical transformation reveals that street pattern and movement, buildings and architectural features, landscape character and natural elements and activities around the streets of royal town are associated with the character of towns built by the colonial rulers which manifests historic streetscapes with distinctive identities and characters. The outcome of this paper could be innovatively applied to contemporary municipalities where present-day planners should learn from urban heritage which greatly emphasizes the street as a public space. � BEIESP.

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.