Conference Agenda

This paper discusses the cooling potential of three types of green roofs, insulated, uninsulated, radiant-evaporative, evaluated with test cells. Different rules and schedules were tested for irrigation, water movement through the radiant pipes, plenum fan operation, and cooling with outside air. Results indicate that on warm days with maximum outdoor temperatures below 32 °C the uninsulated green roof will perform better and on drier days up to 44 °C and a Wet Bulb Temperature below 24 °C, the green roof with a radiant system and evaporative cooling performs better. On very warm days with high maximum temperatures above 33 °C the insulated green roof and the insulated roof (non-green) perform better. Optimum zones for the green roofs are plotted on the Building Bioclimatic Chart.

Buildings in Saudi Arabia consumes approximately 80% of the electricity generated in the country. Saudi Arabia’s hot, arid climate, with summer temperatures frequently exceeding 45°C, means that air conditioning uses nearly 50% of the country’s electricity, and virtually all the electricity is generated from fossil fuels. Passive cooling techniques could be a sustainable alternative to conventional air-conditioning systems when integrated properly within a building. A Passive Downdraught Evaporative Cooling (PDEC) tower is considered as one of the most efficient passive systems and was investigated in this study. A single storey open plan room with a PDEC tower was digitally modelled and then changes in wind direction and architectural form were simulated to see the effect on the PDEC performance. IES VE software was selected for the simulations as it can conduct a dynamic thermal simulation for PDEC systems. A weather file for Riyadh was obtained from the software Meteonorm. The study demonstrated that significant cooling can be achieved by PDEC towers, but that their effectiveness was greatly reduced by changes in wind direction linked to opening distributions in the room attached to the PDEC tower.

This research proposes a new set of equations that predict conditions at the outlet of a single stage passive downdraft evaporative cooling tower (PDECT) as well as a multi-stage passive and hybrid downdraft cooling tower (PHDCT), namely temperature drop (∆T) and air velocity (V). Equations were developed through multiple linear regression using data collected from experimental evaluation conducted during Summer, 2017 in Tempe, Arizona on built prototypes of these towers. Regression analysis indicated a strong correlation between measured and predicted data with an adjusted coefficient of determination ranging between 0.80 and 0.95.

Dry Mist technology targets basic human needs by improving micro climatic conditions to create a healthy and comfortable outdoor environment. The technology can be integrated into the design of public spaces, streetscapes, markets, playgrounds and parks to permit intense outdoor activities and to counter the effects of urban heat islands. This paper is about the results of a performance demonstration of Dry Mist Systems in the Cayman Islands. The systems have been successful tested under tropical conditions in open public spaces, plazas and restaurants.

Field measurements were made in an urban canyon, located in the center of the City and Port of Veracruz, Mexico, where higher temperatures are compared to its surrounding areas. Research focused on better understanding the behavior of the microclimates of a city and its impact on thermal comfort. Temperature (T) and Relative Humidity (RH), are the variables considered to be measured by an autonomous flight system (MeVA), for the determination of the behavior of the street's thermal profile and its fluctuations due to the vehicular park that it transits. It is determined that the increase in temperature as a result of the cars increases from 3.50 to 1.50 ° C, and this effect is dissipated at a height of 3 meters. The investigation allows establishing parameters of adequate control of the vehicular tributary and a better planning in the aspect ratios of an urban canyon so as not to increase the temperature and achieve hygrothermal comfort values for the pedestrian.

The modern building industry sends products all over the world to improve building envelope performance. Though there are existing standards and tools to evaluate hygrothermal behavior of wall sections in different climates, they are often based on different assumptions and provide development teams with different insights. This paper attempts to compare the capabilities and limitations of three hygrothermal analysis tools: Ubakus, HT Flux, and WUFI. An engineered bamboo wall section with wool insulation that was recently built in Washington D.C. is used as a case. The results from the various tools are compared for the different climate zones where constituent parts of the building envelope were manufactured as well as the location of final assembly.

Thermal conditions of spaces in a load-bearing wall house were investigated. The key finding results are 1) steel reinforced concrete structure is needed to be reduced due to its high capability of heat accumulation 2) measured data showed that peck temperatures occurred in late afternoon due to the material’s heat inertia. A new wall system that use the same material was developed. The new wall has the less mass and the air inside the block’s cavities could be ventilated by stack effect in order to reduce heat build-up in the wall and lower peak temperatures of the spaces.

The central scope of this work is the architecture element roof, analysed through its close relationship with two conditions of low latitude regions. First, its relationship with climate conditions, in reference with the high amount of solar radiation it is exposed to, and second, the roof importance, in terms of area, in the middle of a disperse urban tissue. Thus, this study addresses the roof impact on residential buildings interior conditions, in these regions. This investigation has been handled with the use of simulation software. The input data and results were based and validated with a measurements campaign carried out in a seaside city of Ecuador. The results highlight the roof as the principal source of heat gains on the interior heat balance, even higher than direct solar gains through windows.

Users’ well being and satisfaction are a key priority in the current architectural design trends and represent a relevant issue in a human-centred perspective. Concerning this aim, the application of climate adaptive building shells (CABS) offers relevant opportunities for tackling these challenges. This paper reports the outcomes of a study run on CABS to optimise the indoor comfort while calibrating the configuration of a dynamic facade module. Through the physical measurements of the environment and the integration of these values in the parametric process for integrating daylight and thermal performance into the design phase, a performance-based workflow evaluation supported the design of a Passive Adaptive Façade.

The purpose of this work is to provide a replicable method that is the base of a facade system design. The system, made of simple horizontal louvres, has a controlled movement manoeuvred by an actuator that exploits the expansion of a thermo-active resin. The louvres can rotate and close passively with the increase of the external temperature. Results show the uniformity of distribution of daylight across the entire space and the substantial gain of indoor thermal comfort.

In order to quantify the seasonal differences in the comfort temperature and to develop a domestic adaptive model for highly insulated Japanese dwellings, thermal measurements and a thermal comfort survey were conducted for more than one year in the living room of 3 condominiums in Tokyo and Yokohama areas of Japan. We have collected 19,081 thermal comfort votes from 94 residents of 69 flats. The results suggest that the residents are highly satisfied with the thermal environment of their dwellings. People are highly adapted to the thermal condition of the dwellings, and that the comfort temperature has large seasonal variation. An adaptive model for housing was derived from the data to relate the indoor comfort temperature to the prevailing outdoor temperature. Due to the high insulation of the condominiums, the seasonal differences of comfort temperature and the regression coefficient of the adaptive model are smaller than those of detached houses. Adaptive building design and adaptive thermal comfort of people are important for the energy saving building design.

This paper describes the characteristics of Cognitive Temperature Scale (CTS) under the thermal adaptation in summer. Field measurement and survey in summer for about 640 elementary school students in Sapporo and Kumamoto in Japan from 2009 to 2015 were made. Students put a red sticker on their individual “Thermal Diary Card” when they felt strongly thermal discomfort. They also recorded their CTS to the cards without checking the thermometers. It was found that firstly the CTS are strongly connected to the outdoor temperature in Sapporo and Kumamoto. Secondly, the CTS in Sapporo were around 26 to 27°C when 50% of them felt thermal discomfort. On the other hand, the CTS in Kumamoto were over 30°C. This result suggests that there is significant difference in thermal adaptation to the hot and humid environment in Sapporo and Kumamoto.

This paper describes the results of radiant exergy analysis on the process of human adaptive thermal comfort in summer. A subjective experiment controlling not only indoor thermal environment but also their clothes and posture for removing discomfort was made in 2016 summer. We found that subject’s adaptive thermal comfort is related to their cognitive temperature and warm radiant exergy from the interior surface of buildings envelopes. To decrease warm radiant exergy by behavioural controls such as opening the window and the door, and controlling the venetian blind is to decrease their cognitive temperature of the subjects.

This research presents a study of Functionalistic Nordic housing by appraising the Regenerative Sustainable Design qualities of four projects built before the energy crisis of the 1970s and by comparing them to four projects created after the year 2000 when Sustainable Design became an explicit target, and the concept of Regenerative Design was not widespread. The functionalist projects are Erskine’s Box, Aalto's Helsinki House, Jacobsen's, Gotfred Rodes Vej House, and Korsmo's Planetveien House. The recent case studies selected are AART Architects’ Home for Life, Henning Larsen’s Adaptable House, Rune’s Tind Prefabricated House and Kaminsky Architecture’s Villa Nyborg. The Regenerative Design Sustainable Features of the case studies are studied qualitatively considering aspects such as Biophilia, Salutogenesis, Human Centric Design and quantitatively analysing Daylighting Distribution, Operational and Embodied Energy. Site visits, literature review, and computer simulation are the used methods.

Smart materials are often studied in architecture due to their internal changeable properties stimulated by various material-specific input or operating factors. Meanwhile, climate-adaptive facades have been investigated for design and simulation to achieve dynamic aesthetics satisfying environmental performance for energy efficiency and indoor comfort. This paper presents a design exploration framework for climate-adaptive facades with thermally responsive smart materials, limiting the scope of study to a pilot study of facades in Seoul, South Korea. The proposed smart material building skins are discussed for further simulation and validation to assess multiple criteria to verify their environmental performance and implementation for practical use. The paper is concluded by providing selected thermo-responsive smart material facade types and directions for future work.

This paper studies the Dai houses and villages in Xishangbanna, Southwest China. Dai is one of 55 ethnic minorities in China. By comparing the field study of Dai houses carried out in the 1990s and the field study for two villages in 2017, the research investigates two key aspects. Firstly, it considers the influence of new building materials and technologies and impacts brought in by rapid urbanization, together with changes in the traditional integrated relationship between houses, village environment, and surrounding environment. Three key impacts on rural development in the region were identified. Secondly, the project explores the development of the research methods for vernacular houses in China. The focuses of investigation, starting from anthropological studies in the 1950s, now include greater consideration of environmental context. Research found that architects and academic scholars can support the interface between policy, academic studies and practices on rural development for decision-making. Medium term planning is needed in order to provide link between current practice and long term sustainable aims.

Building regulations are currently under development across Europe in advance of the implementation of the nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) standard at national member state level. However, when revising the national building regulations to improve energy efficiency, few examples exist of the monitored performance of such dwellings, making informed decision-making difficult. This paper reports on the monitored performance of nZEB compliant dwellings which were built to the Passive House (PH) Standard. It finds that the PH bedroom CO2 concentrations are significantly better than in houses built to the current building regulations which use natural ventilation.

The renovation of existing buildings is one of the priorities of western countries and needs to be promoted to increase the current low renovation rate, estimated to be of 0.6% per year in the European and Swiss contexts. In parallel, the implementation of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) elements during the renovation process can provide a crucial response to achieve the 2050 targets in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy savings. In this context, architects, designers and engineers have a key role in achieving these objectives, mainly because they are responsible for the design decisions during the development of the projects, especially during the early-design phase when the most influential decisions are taken. Through a real-case study built in 1968, this research shows how certain design-decisions in renovation processes can affect or compromise the final performance of the building from a global life-cycle and multi-criteria approach. Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Cost (LCC) results show the importance of not losing the opportunity to go beyond current practices when a building needs to be renovated and highlight the necessity to take into consideration BIPV strategies to guarantee both economic and environmental targets.

In 2013 the International Energy Agency addressed the building sector the compelling importance for changing the mode of energy and climate control1.. In seeking the contribution to this issue, this research frames the moral and the vocabulary of functionalism architecture, that values a simple flat square façade, has reached the limit for this quest and made tests to formulate an alternative ground where new set of rules and technology might appear. This research seeks answers in three-dimensionally formed façades that create shades. This research is showing the result of tests of new façade geometry. The model is is a conlusion of a search path to find façade with osmosis effects of lights: more surface area that allow penetration of ‘cool’ daylight. With the system new building will benefit roughly twice as much as use of daylight in comparison to any other existing system. The façade system is considered as a mean to soften harsh climate such as desert. It is expected to create soft northern Europe like light condition.

This research aims to provide an insight into the existing research and practices on vernacular architecture, serving as a basis for further research on vernacular architecture in China and the relevant design research both locally and internationally. It also attempts to identify approaches that can improve the overall sustainability of vernacular architecture from a retrospective perspective, using emerging technologies in contemporary architecture. It looks at the concept of vernacular architecture in contemporary contexts and provide methods for further sustainable practices.

The past decades of focus on sustainability and the decrease of energy consumption in the built environment has led to higher demand for integrated design and implementation of technical scientific knowledge in the design process. This paper aims to investigate the state of the art for the implementation of technical knowledge in architectural offices in the Nordic countries and the degree to which integrated design is performed. This paper reflects a larger survey-based study among architectural offices in Scandinavia that have a focus on sustainability. The paper underlines the diversity of each architectural office through a work profile developed based on the surveys. Although the offices’ workflows differ, microclimate comfort, daylight, and energy performance tend to be well-integrated topics in building design processes today. However, life cycle costing and life cycle assessment are new topics in the building industry and are still not included in design processes in practice. There is a discrepancy between how important architects evaluate certain kinds of information and how they include it. Much information is still based on ‘experience’ and ‘intuition’ rather than derived from the inclusion of technical scientific methods.

Shared bicycles have been around for a while and growing steadily in China. Recently, concept and volume of this new form of shared transportation vehicles captured a widespread attention and usage. This study is focused in two areas known as former French concession in Shanghai and in Xintiandi. Using one of the popular bicycle sharing app “Mobike” location and number of available bicycles is captured during a period of one week, three times a week, and every eight hours. Furthermore, this data is correlated with the existent urban framework by analysing certain aspects such as proximity to building services and daily life of locals. Allowing a quantitative and comparative evaluation with other sites regarding predictors of urban development, cyclers safety and urban quality. Then a proximity factor is introduced measuring the distance to key services, such as supermarkets, restaurants or office buildings, that impact life in the area. Finally, it will be possible to determine the comparative quality of these areas and take conclusions regarding future area studies and comparisons.

This paper considers both the housing emergency and unused building stock as part of "People and Community" and shows how, by recovering unused buildings in metropolitan areas for residential use and through conscious management by the inhabitants, the energy-hungry building stock can be upgraded and mitigate the housing emergency. The Case Study reported here is the "Spin Time Labs" building in the heart of Rome, a former office building squatted by 180 homeless families (323 inhabitants) since 2013 that has become an urban regeneration laboratory and creator of economic value and social redemption.

Safe public spaces that are universally accessible for enjoyment have become important goals for cities around the world. Universal safety is a fundamental requirement for cities to become sustainable and inclusive. Such performance criteria are difficult to measure at the scale of the local neighbourhoods and streets, and this can have life-and-death consequences for vulnerable and marginalised demographics, such as women, children or urban newcomers who are unfamiliar with local dangers and risks. However, technological advances are creating a new landscape for data production, collection and analysis, capable not only to portray routine urban patterns in fine spatial and temporal scales, but also to empower citizens as part of this process. This study analyse the data collected in Bogota and Nairobi through SafetiPin app which was developed in response to the exclusive and unsafe character of neighbourhoods. This mobile app crowd-sources data to identify the factors that lead to lack of safety and insecurity in cities. The findings of this study suggest that lighting, openness, visibility, and public transport could significantly affect the prediction of whether people feel safe. This paper also discusses the extent of this impact.

In Word Health Organization’s Global Age-Friendly Cities Guide, green spaces have been identified as essential age-friendly features in urban environments. A pilot study had been conducted to study the interrelationship between key design aspects of green spaces, health conditions of elderly residents, and their perception and preference of the green spaces using questionnaire survey. It was also found that perceived safety in green areas is associated with the aesthetic quality and the physical health of elderly residents. The results also reveal individual differences among elderly residents in perception of green spaces and the associated health outcomes. Moreover, this study showed that plant colour and maintenance of green spaces are the key design and management aspects that linked to objective assessment on aesthetic quality. Findings of the study will inform the planning and design of age-friendly urban environments in high-density cities.

Abstract: In Taiwan, the average of convenient store's Energy Use Intensity (EUI) is high at a 1501 (kWh/m2/year) which is 3 times higher than department stores, 7times higher than central air conditioning office buildings and 38times higher than housing due to operational hours, internal loads and a poorly designed building envelope. Unexpectedly, communities use convenience stores as thermal comfort refuges during summer. This study utilised a dataset of 251 convenience stores in Taiwan from the largest leading retailer to obtain data on the physical, construction elements, energy use and siting of convenience stores. Sample analysis results analysed the architectural features and main locations, urban setting of the convenience store for a base case design. The dynamic software IES-VE (2016) is used to simulate different envelope improvement techniques to understand cooling demand and indoor thermal performance in relation to an urban setting. The dataset energy loads were used to validate the simulation results. The simulation results show that the most efficient building envelope improvement type is an insulation roof with shading. It saves 17% of cooling load in arterial roads while saving up to 18% of cooling load in residential areas.

Energy Performances Certificates have been implemented in Spain just in the moment of the largest real estate recession, such situation does not allow to observe consumers’ preferences on energy efficient homes. This paper uses choice experiment to study the relative importance of energy efficiency in relation to other functional and quality attributes. In order to evaluate the role of framework information in the formation of household preferences the sample has been split into 2 sets and informed on the economic and environmental implications of energy efficiency using technical and illustrative units. Results suggest that households do give importance to energy efficiency mainly when they are informed in an easy-to understand way. This latter finding has important implications for the design of energy policy.

Currently, office buildings are designed with a high window to wall ratio (WWR), without external solar protection systems (CPS), causing visual and thermal discomfort and high building’s energy consumption. Complex fenestration systems (CFS), which include an external CPS, allow the mitigation of these problems. During the design process of a building, it is very important to predict the thermal and visual behavior of the façade systems. There are many validated tools to support the buildings design process that allows evaluating their thermal and lighting performance. Most of these tools require expert knowledge in thermal and visual evaluation methods of buildings. On the other hand, the energy performance of a building highly depends highly on early façade´s design decisions. The objective of this paper is to show a new tool to support the design process of office buildings in Chile. This tool allows the simultaneous analysis of the total energy consumption (heating, cooling, and lighting) and the visual comfort conditions in the space of a building. This tool is that it is easy to use and allows reliable simulations in a very short time, which makes it useful and practical for the early stages of the office building design process.

This paper presents a brief analysis of the substitution of the main materials traditionally used in civil construction by less energy-intensive materials, their contribution to Energy Efficiency - EE and to the reduction of GHG emissions. For the analysis, the calculation method developed by Cruz (2018) was used considering three ecoindicators: energy - (kWh/m2), environmental - (tCO2/m2), and socioeconomic - relation between minimum wage and construction cost. The study does not intend to present the life cycle analysis of the construction industry or materials, considering that its focus is to perform an objective analysis through a direct method of evaluating the substantialenergy of the materials and their equivalent GHG emissions. The final results present a epresentative case in the construction of Brazilian cities: Minha Casa Minha Vida Program, selected by the strong Brazilian housing demand, scope and volume of public investment.

Providing access to a view out is fundamental for ensuring healthy living conditions in indoor spaces; however, there are no procedures for capturing luminous variations of a view over time. The study introduces a dynamic method for quantifying such variables through HDR time-lapse photography and digital image-processing techniques. Two series with analogous contextual features portrayed three consistent luminous variability conditions. Local luminous variation suggests the highest potential to influence visual response. Finally, the paper discusses design implications and future refinements to the methodology.

Large scale daylight simulations and representations on one single analysis grid are currently impossible with the

use of conventional software and computers. Computational limitations that relate to the capacity of computer machines as well

as analysis restrictions that relate to the allowable grid node count imposed by daylight simulation software prohibit daylightcoefficient

based calculations on large scale analysis grids. The present paper utilizes a real aviation project and presents the

development of a workflow that provides the ability to perform very demanding processes in acceptable time. Radiance related

ray‐tracing processes and matrix multiplications occur on the cloud using High Performance Computing and custom scripts that

facilitate and accelerate the progression. The analysis grid count is decomposed into manageable fragments and after the

calculation is performed, the fragmented values are recomposed in one single list of results that are utilized for colouring the

analysis grid mesh. Processes are sped up by approximately 32 times. Customized tools can be adaptive and reused in other

applications with minimum modifications. The methodology can also be adopted for performing other annual climate‐based

simulations or for glare studies.

Spectral information is fundamental in understanding the human responses to light. In order to assess the impact of light on visual and non-image forming effects (NIF) in more complex surroundings, in addition to spatially and temporally resolved daylight measurement, spectrally resolved information is required. This paper focuses on the inclusion of spectral aspects of daylight to specify the potential when planning for NIF aspects in urban structures, to reduce energy consumption for electric lighting for this purpose. It introduces a novel model to describe spectral characteristics on facades in the built environment in function of prevailing daylight conditions (location, sun position, season and time of day) and the building orientation. These orientation-dependent spectral characteristics of daylight on façades are represented in spectral daylight potential diagrams (SDPD).

This study evaluates the daylight performance of the newly built workshop building at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India using calibrated Radiance simulations with Lightstanza user interface. The building houses model making, wood, metal, ceramics & clay workshops. The methodology included field measurement of illuminance at the task plane, long term measurements, and surface material characteristics, calibrating the daylight model, and calculations of lighting energy savings. The calibrated model of the building has a RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) and an NMBE (Normalized Mean Bias Error) of less than 4%. The daylighting performance of building could achieve 4 points for LEED v4 with 93%sDA750/50% and 0.4%ASE1000/250hr. and meets ECBC (Energy Conservation Building Code) daylighting requirements. It achieves a DA750 of 46%, and the current manual switching response to daylight saves INR 86,424 per year. The Daylight Glare Probability (DGP) analysis showed that the spaces inside the workshop are likely to experience glare issues during the summer months, mostly between the time period 5-6 PM when direct sun penetrates in to the space.

Building Energy Models, which consider all energetic aspects of a building’s performance, are a beneficial tool for use in a building’s design and operational stage to optimise the design or performance of a building, aid in decision making, and carry out code compliance. Model calibration is a term which refers to the improvement in the performance of a BEM simulation to better match the actual building in design or operation, which will in turn improve the results in using the BEMs in their various applications. Model calibration is particularly relevant in a building’s operational stage considering that, as well as the number of dynamic elements involved in a building’s performance on a day-to-day basis, buildings quite often perform differently to the initial design intent. Despite the benefits, model calibration is a time-consuming process which typically requires expert user knowledge. This paper details a methodology focused on improving and automating elements of the calibration process to address these current known limitations.

PV installations on flat roofs offer a wide range of design options, which are usually neglected in urban-scale assessments as these typically assume horizontal or other fixed arrangements. In this study, we analyse the influence of common design parameters (tilt and inter-row distance) in evaluating the potential of PV arrays installed on flat roofs, using three different performance indicators. By comparing optimised arrangements to horizontal ones, we show that the latter could be misleading, unless building- and indicator-specific correction coefficients are applied.

Energy performance of historic buildings is an urgent matter, but mass implementation of efficient measures faces several challenges (namely, conservation, durability, or comfort). This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary study of wooden windows in alpine buildings. Different approaches are needed depending whether the original window is maintained or substituted. In the first case, the results of a desk-based study led to the proposal of two new strategies of intervention. In the latter, an interdisciplinary workshop allowed highlighting the deficiencies of current practice whereas simulation results supported the definition of new approaches to address them.

Vernacular housing in tropical climates traditionally relies heavily on natural ventilation for comfort. However, global warming and climate change are threatening the efficacy of this technique. The study presented here explored two Myanmar housing types in the countries’ three climate zones, and fifteen different ventilation regimes aiming to provide comfort to the occupiers with no reliance on energy. A comparative study was developed with a total of 444 dynamic simulations where orientation, window-to-wall-ratio, and infiltration rates were varied. The efficacy of single-sided and cross-ventilation and the relationship between local weather and the culturally acceptable time to allow the opening of the fenestration were also explored. The results using a typical weather year were then compared with three future climate change scenarios. The results confirmed that the current ventilation practices are not able to provide the required thermal comfort both for typical weather year and when considering future climate change scenarios. The authors concluded the study with suggestions to redesign the façades to improve the overall performances.

In the drive toward reduced energy consumption and consequent carbon emissions, and also reductions in fuel poverty and discomfort, the need to improve the performance of existing buildings, particularly housing is critical. To meet government targets some policy drivers are being implemented to improve the performance of existing building. In Scotland this has been through the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH) which provides funding for retrofit measures. However, very little is known about the consequences of these measures. This project developed ‘light-touch’ building performance (BPE) approaches to undertake evaluation of retrofit measures examine their effectiveness and the paper identifies these techniques and reports on the findings. Whilst in general improvements led to reduced energy consumption, various unintended consequences were evident. These included issues of thermal bridging and poor detailing, and lack of improved ventilation provision led to issues of poor ventilation and indoor air quality and reinforces the need for wider evaluation of buildings in use.

This paper addresses an emerging issue for village communities located particularly in SW China. Government inspired efforts to redevelop rural villages combined with aspirations of local residents have led to the replacement of the traditional, predominantly wood-construction house with a modern, mainly concrete, alternative. The new houses have modern facilities (such as for washing and cooking) but also very different thermal characteristics and are found with large windows and more restricted air flow. There is normally little involvement of professionals in appropriate ways that would allow optimisation of design for future comfort and energy efficiency. This paper describes some analytical studies of typical design options and identifies some influencing parameters. The research justifies the need for, and development of, a tool suitable for use by village committees/groups and their advisors that will provide decision-support for optimisation of comfort and energy use.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate future impacts of different emission scenarios on architecture design strategies according to a notable thermal comfort model, the methodological procedure employed in this study is intended to provide quantifiable elements to weight the impact of climate change on passive architecture effectiveness according B1, A1B and B2 IPCC scenarios in terms of design strategies applied to achieve thermal comfort, in compliance with the ASHRAE comfort model results showed affectations about 10-25% on comfort effectiveness, causing affectations on the way we conceive and build the future passive architecture morphology.

This paper presents five design prototypes for cool urban water environments developed in the ‘Really cooling water bodies in cities’ (REALCOOL) project. The REALCOOL prototypes address an urgent need: urban water bodies, such as ponds or canals, are often assumed to cool down their surroundings during days with heat stress, whereas recent research shows that this is not always the case and that urban water bodies may actually have warming effects too. There are, however, indications that shading, vaporising water, and proper ventilation can keep water bodies and their surroundings cooler. Yet, it is necessary to explore how these strategies can be optimally combined and how the resulting design guidelines can be communicated to design professionals. The REALCOOL prototypes communicate the spatial layout and biometeorological effects of such combinations and assist design decisions dealing with urban water environments. The micrometeorological simulations with Envi-met showed that the prototypes led to local reductions on daytime PET from 1 °C to 7 °C, upon introducing shade. Water mist and fountains were also cooling solutions. The important role of ventilation was confirmed. The paper discusses and concludes about the use of the prototypes as tools for urban design practice.

During an architectonical competition for a new neighbourhood in Frankfurt/Main, Germany microscale urban climate modelling was carried out to help decision makers to choose the best climate adopted design for implementation. Based on an urban climatic map with ventilation modelling all designs were proofed by the microscale model ENVI-met. The evaluation was done with the thermal index PET, as here ventilation and radiation processes could be judged. All results show a clear change in climate. For the winner design it was possible to reduce the local heat load and creating air paths for surrounding neighbourhoods.

ABSTRACT: Climate scientists warn that “time is running out to prevent global environmental collapse” [1]. Global CO2 emissions increased again in 2017, after three years of stagnation. This was the conclusion drawn from two studies that confirmed the forecasts of experts who recently participated in the Bonn Climate Summit (COP 23). [2] It is therefore increasingly urgent to cut emissions and thereby avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Only then will it be possible to achieve the objective of not exceeding an increase in average global temperature of 2ºC that had been established at the Paris Climate Summit. Here, we report on a case study of energy rehabilitation involving a publicly-owned residential building constructed in Barcelona in the 1960s and a plan to convert it into an Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB): “EU Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings" (2010/31/EU). [3].

KEYWORDS: Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB), Passive house principles, Energy modelling software.

The urban village is a unique phenomenon in China that thousands of former rural villages have been rapidly urbanized along with the surrounding built environment. The government, developers, and urban planners positioned these urban enclaves as to have terrible environmental quality and support wholesale demolition during urban renewal. Given the absence of environmental knowledge of urban villages and the evaluation of environmental impacts after reconstruction, this research examined urban heat island (UHI) and outdoor ventilation of two reconstructed urban villages in inner-city Shenzhen. Significant UHI during the day and night in the two reconstructed urban villages and strong wind conditions of some edge spaces were captured. Sky view factor, greenery planning, and the porosity of ambient environment provide directions to address the above-identified environmental problems.

The residential market in the Mediterranean climate as well as in other parts of the world has a large number of buildings that were built with a long lasting structure but limited consideration for energy efficiency and thermal comfort. Retrofitting the existing envelope can help reach national energy reduction goals while improving the living conditions and reduce energy expenses for the tenants. This study focuses on low budget retrofitting of old residential buildings in a Mediterranean climate with two applicative case studies already finished. The two buildings are of similar size but in different local climate settings. In both projects a similar analysis methodology was performed, that included structural, thermal and energy use inquiry. The analysis concluded in intervention strategies for each building, and despite the similarity in the buildings, the variations in the intervention strategies were essential. This paper focuses on the methodology to analyse existing structures in order to identify preferred renovation tactics, based on the knowledge of the executed case studies. The study was done in collaboration with Israeli housing companies and is meant to serve as a pilot for larger renovation projects of existing residential building stock.

The applicability of passive cooling methods has been a recurring subject in architectural engineering science. The integration of these methods in architecture often requires feasibility studies and, in most cases, a deep knowledge of the climatic conditions is required to succeed in this task. The number of parameters to be evaluated will depend on the complexity of the cooling system, the physics involved and the context. This paper addresses the climatic applicability of convective and evaporative cooling systems in the context of United States (US) through the creation of a series of applicability maps deriving from processed climate data. This work is a revision of the climatic maps for downdraught cooling developed in Europe and in China with an extension to evaluate the opportunity for natural ventilation. More specifically, the studied cooling solutions are: Natural Convective Cooling (NCC), Passive Evaporative Cooling (PEC), and Active Downdraught Cooling (ADC). The maps obtained demonstrate the strong potential for the use of passive evaporative and convective cooling solutions in the US to overcome the current dependency on mechanical systems.

Climate and weather severe events together with political conflicts linked to climate change are the most driving force for mass population to leave their homes seeking safe heavens. Climate refugees are becoming and will be the next wicked challenges we will face. Refugee temporary settlements proved to have high environmental burdens given their short life time using industrial materials with high embodied carbon in the production. Since long, alternative natural based low impact materials do exist using a carbon neutral production and construction process. This paper is presenting the outcome of one-year project in designing and constructing an eco-cycle negative carbon and positive energy eco-cycle home. The idea is to achieve a self-sufficient and low impact temporary shelter design with the least carbon emissions during construction and after demolition. The design complies with premium passive house standards constructed in an experimental urban living lab for proof of concept. The house now under monitoring for evaluating its performance. The project is applied in Sweden but the methodology could be applied in different other climatic contexts.

The cost of living rurally, already higher than urban areas in terms of food, transport and energy, is exacerbated by energy inefficient and inflexible homes, which has had detrimental impacts on the viability and sustainable growth of rural communities. Following on from community land buy-outs in the late 1990’s, the communities on the Island of Eigg and the Knoydart peninsula in the remote north west of Scotland have facilitated innovative measures which have been central to lowering their CO2 emissions and maintaining the viability of their off-grid locations. Central to Eigg’s strategy has been the implementation of a world-first zero-emission grid combining LZCGTs, battery storage and smart controls, telecommunications networks and shared equity land policies to encourage self-build housing. Notwithstanding, there is a lack of appropriate community-led, affordable, adaptable, grid-integrated housing models which remains a significant barrier to encouraging new people to move into the community to ensure its long-term resilience. The following paper discusses parameters for the design of alternative hybrid zero-emission housing typologies that have the capacity to cater for varied tenures and lifestyles, including live-work and rentable space, providing lifetime homes and energy balancing scenarios through their in-built flexibility.

Due to the expectation of climate change and increasing global temperature, new building rates will face challenges. Nearly 40% of world-wide carbon emissions can be linked to building's energy consumption. Therefore, it is significant to understand how a building's energy consumption will behave under future climate change in order to reduce carbon emissions. The residential sector's demand for energy in the KSA is massive at 50%. Based on recent government initiatives of KSA, mandatory new residential buildings must meet stringent energy codes. This study investigates the effects of applying the new Saudi residential building energy codes for a detached single-family house (villa) located in Jeddah, KSA. This study aims to see how the code might perform under current and future climate change scenarios. Although the current code already shows a significant improvement in combating future climate change, a total reduction of 38% in the annual cooling demands of existing villas in Jeddah after applying the new standards will be illustrated. However, increases in cooling energy demand due to climate change still exist. Applying more passives strategies that are not included in the code would assist the researcher in knowing if there are other means to achieve significant decreases in cooling demand.

People in rural areas of Nepal have been using firewood for variety of household purposes. In this paper we analysed the firewood consumption patterns and their relationship with family size and the number of livestock rearing in the study area of Dhading district of Nepal. Investigation on periodic household firewood consumption was carried out for 24 hours for 16 households. Per-capita firewood consumption was found 639 kg/capita/year and average household firewood consumption was found 12.1 kg/family/day. We found household firewood consumption increases as increase in family size but per-capita firewood consumption decreases with increase in family size. Firewood consumption was also increased with the increase in the number of livestock reared. The rate of firewood combustion of small and big households was 1.28 kg/hour and 1.34 kg/hour respectively. Average time for firewood burning of households of small and big households was found 8.7 hours and 9.9 hours per day. Based on present information on the firewood consumption patterns of Dhading district, application of appropriate technologies for the improvements on traditional cooking stoves and improvements on the environmental and health condition of the rural people are to be done

With the aim of optimizing urban built environments in terms of potentially consumed and produced energy of buildings, a new methodological approach is proposed based on several urban typo-morphological archetypes. Given the complexity to obtain all their characteristics at integrating knowledge of urban planning professionals or architects in a co-design situation, both in terms of produced geometry and materials to be used, a hybrid tool with parametric modeling capabilities and operators on high-level geometric primitives is proposed inside a framework coupling all the tools necessary for energy optimization. It integrates a parametric urban morphology generator based on Rhinoceros/Grasshopper, an energetic assessments tool working at urban scale (Citysim) and a tool controlling the optimization process (ModeFrontier), which gives best urban form solutions using a multi-criteria analysis among best potential solutions inside the Pareto front. This approach appears to give an adapted way for integration of a high level of representation and knowledge on urban archetypes, thereby giving a way to deepen the exploration of new energy-optimized urban forms.

Building energy simulations carry out detailed calculations for energy prediction for each and every part of the building geometry. For the fenestrations, details about the glazing, the frame and the shading device are taken as simulation inputs. For the glazing part the typical inputs are the U-Value and the solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) value for the glazing. Although the SHGC value is a standard value for a glazing type, there are different calculation methods to account for the impact of shading devices into the SHGC values. The impact of SHGC value through two different methods are studied in terms of solar gains (kWh) through fenestration and cooling energy. The results are also compared with the results of the simulation model in which the shading devices are modelled and the manufacturer’s SHGC value is considered instead of effective SHGC value. Further, the impact on cooling energy reduction is determined and compared for different latitudes, climates and overhang depth. The results show that the cooling energy reduction obtained from the methods with detailed heat transfer mechanisms are closer to the results obtained from the simulation with the physical shading device.

This research focuses on thermal performance of Mongolian self-built houses within the capital city; Ulaanbaatar. The main aim was to optimize the thermal performance in terms of energy efficiency. Fieldwork in Mongolia and computer-based analyses were undertaken. The intention of the fieldwork was to a) visit a range of self-built houses and create a design interpretation of the typical Mongolian self-built house, and b) monitor the internal and external temperatures of one house for validating the computer model. The computer based study used Autodesk Ecotect software to model both the monitored and the typical design. Monitored data was statistically compared to simulated temperatures and mean internal temperatures inside the typical house were simulated. A parametric study was carried out to optimise the walls, floor and ceiling insulation to reduce the annual heating loads. The optimum insulation level for the external walls was found to be 300mm of expanded polystyrene on the outside of the walls. Infiltration rate was found to significantly affect the heating loads. The effect of several construction combinations were simulated and the best case scenario was found to reduce the total annual heating loads from 37,990 kW to 12,692 kW.

This paper proposes a new heuristic to simulate and study the visual comfort aspect in the designing of Complex Fenestration Systems. The goal of the heuristic is two-folded, (i) provide useful and simple visualization tools for preliminary glare assessments of indoor spaces, (ii) reduce the computational overhead of extremely expensive annual glare simulations by reducing the number of simulations necessary in the study of glare. The work demonstrates that through a spatial and temporal sampling of annual Vertical Illuminance data it is possible to map the potential glare POVs and to find the critical hours to conduct more detailed simulations. The authors applied the proposed heuristic in a comparative study of 3 different fenestration schemes for 3 annual sky types, a typically overcast (London, UK) and clear sky (Phoenix, AZ, USA), and an intermediate sky (Oakland, CA, USA). In sum, the results of the work show that the proposed heuristic yields a high potential to be used in design procedures that currently are based on expensive glare simulations.

This abstract focuses on how to better adapt design aid software in daylighting to the architectural and urban design process. Reflecting on why daylighting evaluation tools are seldom use in the design process, we highlight the fact that current validated tools cannot provide results in a timely manner compatible with the design process. Users do not need the same precision of results during the various phases of design process. Much more importantly they need information at the right time. We show that cumulative ray-tracing is a good candidate for results better suited to the design process, we call this type of method "Instant Method".

This paper presents an application of the Light Pipe Dimensioning Model (LPDM) on the design of systems which guide daylight into underground boarding platforms on typical subway stations found in the city of São Paulo. The dimensioning model resulted in two different design proposals, which were empirically tested using a scale model (1:20) as a source of data for performance comparisons. Polished aluminium light pipes, with 95% internal reflectance, were designed and distributed along the train boarding platform. The illuminance data obtained one meter above the floor shows how the distance between two pipes affect the quality of the distribution of light in the space.

Building-integrated carbon capturing is a system that provides carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and regeneration within buildings using a moisture-swing air capture technology developed by Dr. Klaus Lackner at Arizona State University’s Centre for Negative Carbon Emissions. This paper serves as a continual ideation towards moving a concept from the research and development phase into prototype development to perform experimental evaluation of how such a project would perform in real-life scenarios. We intend to build on strengths and overcome past design weaknesses through cross-industry innovation to create a more robust mechanism that is capable of carbon capture and regeneration.

This paper aims to identify the potential of natural ventilation for cooling a representative two-bedroom residential apartment layout in India. India faces an unprecedented demand for residences and must reduce energy consumption associated with air-conditioning. Three significant climates and cities in India are investigated in this paper. The potential to extend the hours of the year for which thermal comfort is achievable using natural ventilation strategies is tested. This potential is identified by employing analytical methods to design and size ventilation capacity. Five natural ventilation design strategies are used over several scenarios varying window free area and ceiling fan speed. Indoor temperature setpoints are based on the India Model for Adaptive Comfort. Results are given as percentage of hours of the year for which natural ventilation is capable to remove calculated heat gains. Percentages of hours are divided into day-time and night-time. Findings show that the combination of large windows or balcony doors with additional ventilation openings and ceiling fan increases the total percentages of hours of the year for which natural ventilation is effective impacting on substantial energy consumption reduction with air-conditioning. Conversely, this potential varies with climate, and hence location.

Buildings consume 33% of total energy (24% domestic and 9% commercial) in India and this is growing at 8% per annum. Reliance on fossil fuel and increasing demand for energy has led to having an unregulated energy use in buildings in India. Despite multiple instances of green buildings existing throughout India wide-scale adoption of green building practices have not been observed. This leads to higher than predicted energy use. Building Performance Evaluation is essential to reduce this gap and help buildings perform better. Despite the improvements in building systems and services, energy efficient building design and implementation – there is a growing gap observed between the intended and actual performance of buildings leading to higher than expected energy use. The purpose of this study is to understand this performance gap for a university building. The study evaluates the actual performance of this building through on-site measurements and provides feedback for the building to perform better.

Town housings are facing good prospects and will play an important role in energy-saving and emission reduction in the future. As the main energy resource for heating, coal utilization in the severe cold region is worthy of attention. With data from the 2016 Northeast towns investigation, this paper estimated coal utilization in town housing by calculating expenditure. The investigation covered 4 aspects: basic household information, family living conditions, residential housing characteristics and energy utilization. Town residential coal utilization in Jilin Province is the most, while Liaoning Province is the least. Household appliances, cooking fuel, central heating, heating tools, housing area and monthly income are analysed as factors of residential coal utilization.

The improvement in the thermal and energy performance of an office building project, located in the city of Antofagasta, is analyzed, upon incorporating passive strategies oriented towards the thermal and light comfort in its design. A "base case" of the building was prepared and simulated for this, where climate-based design strategies were incorporated. The assessment is made on two of its floors: a compartmentalized floor, where the office with the most unfavorable orientation was analyzed, and an open-plan floor which was completely assessed. It was possible to determine through the simulation that the incorporation of passive strategies reduced the thermal discomfort period by an average of 80% versus the base case. In addition, on integrating the thermal comfort strategies with the natural lighting ones, energy demand was reduced by 90%. The criteria applied to the building's design will be presented, where the shape strategies, envelope optimization, solar control, ventilation and natural lighting are included, revealing how the building's final shape was nothing more than the result of the passive strategies integration process.

This study compares the thermal and visual comfort performance of the prototypical school classrooms design in two climatic regions in the Dominican Republic. Established metrics for thermal and visual indices combined with dynamic building performance simulations are carried out to assess the current performance and possible architectural interventions to improve the environmental performance of the classrooms. The PMV/PPD method with the ASHRAE scale, the adaptive comfort with the EN-15251 standard, the neutral comfort obtained with Kubota hot humid climate equations and the thermal sensation votes analysis underpins the conclusions. The prototypical classroom design was in the “comfortable” range in Santiago while “slightly cool” in Constanza School. Simulations were used to evaluate the daylight conditions and showed that Daylight Factor and Illuminance were within the acceptable ranges, but issues with glare and daylight uniformity arise. This study indicates that the use of light shelves do not improve the daylight conditions and suggests other architectural design interventions that are more effective in improving the indoor environment for students and teachers.

Post-occupancy evaluation is easily one of the most effective tools in completing the full-circle of learning from practice in architecture. The impact of the design strategies envisioned during a project can truly be understood by the experiences and satisfaction of the actual occupants of that space.The paper outlines the results from post-occupancy evaluations of open and transitional spaces in different project typologies located in India’s prevalent composite and hot-dry climate. The projects were envisaged using passive design principles and vernacular examples without the support of computer aided simulations. The learnings have been evaluated in the form of quantifiable metrics like energy consumption, spot measurements as well as feedback on users’ spatial experiences and satisfaction. The projects demonstrate that comfortable open and transitional spaces can be successfully treated as an extension to the indoors, leading to the potential elimination of built spaces for interactive functions.

Nanotechnology is commonly regarded as a crucial step ahead in technology advancement to tackle some of the environmental problems of our contemporary building construction industry. The main characteristic that distinguishes nanomaterials is size, being defined as materials whose parts are smaller than 100 nanometres. This change in size of the material’s structure, enables the generation of new material interactions with energy, opening new possibilities for performance improvement, which in turn leads to a reduction of energy consumption and greenhouse gasses emissions. Nanotechnology appears to be one of the alternatives to pursue the desired impact minimisation, while meeting the required comfort standards to provide good living conditions to the building’s occupants. But, how reliable is this statement?

The City of Buenos Aires lies on a regular grid of square blocks, following the traditional ‘Law of Indies’. Due to large immigration waves from Europe during the 20th century, the city went through a very rapid densification process leading to constant changes in the building regulations to meet housing needs. Therefore, the city is currently composed by a mix of buildings responding to all different regulations, resulting in a very irregular urban landscape. By contrast, the current building regulation proposes an extremely regular model, by limiting buildable heights according to zoning and plot dimensions. This paper is a simulation-based study that explores the environmental performance of the ‘irregular’ actual built form and the ‘regular’ model following current building regulations. The method consists of three main steps: firstly, the city’s urban layout is studied, identifying the most common block orientation. Secondly, analytic studies are carried out to evaluate the performance of typical ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ blocks. Lastly, a redesign for the current urban block is proposed, engaging in reducing energy consumption per block and focusing specially on outdoor variety and comfort. This results in an effective ‘generic’ morphologic model, to be applied in the growth of low and mid-density blocks.

The current paper presents the activities carried out by a Working Group (WG2) within the frame of the COST Action CA16114 ‘RESTORE: Rethinking Sustainability Towards a Regenerative Economy’. The content is divided into two parts: a brief overview of the ongoing work within RESTORE, and a detailed analysis of the tasks performed in the Working Group tackling the Regenerative Design Process (RSD). With the term “Restorative Design”, is identified the activities of design, construction and building operation to regenerate the local natural systems to a healthy state and supporting their capability for self-organization and regeneration. The objective is thus to improve the built environment restorative quality, considering current and future climatic scenarios, focusing on the revision of the energy demand, and on the outdoor human comfort The paper presents a series of urban methods and design cases studies that engages in newer, continuous and healthy, relationship with the unique ‘place’ of intervention in light of climate adaptation. The envisaged results direct a change on the path of “to perceive” “to adapt” and “to develop” the urban environment and to define recommendations for science based interdisciplinary design processes.

Urban brownfield regeneration projects are complex operations that are not automatically sustainable. To facilitate the integration of sustainability issues in these projects, a recent research project led to the creation of an operational monitoring tool tested on case studies. Following this, we undertook interactions with the stakeholders of the case studies to confront the potential of the tool with the future end user’s point of view and the reality of the practice. This paper presents the method and results of these interactions. Essentially, it has been recognized that the tool could provide a valuable decision-making support throughout the transformation of urban brownfields into new sustainable neighborhoods. The inclusion of a monitoring tool into the management of these projects appears not only feasible, but realistic and desired.

The design of residential area is a complex urban design process involving multiple dimensions and shaping the physical form of the cities. The question of how the form meets the needs of all other dimensions while satisfying environmental performance requirements is discussed in this paper from the methodological point of view. A Factors System (FS) is built to organize the factors in different dimensions of the complex urban system to discover, demonstrate and describe the relevance between the formal & spatial factors and other ones. Based on the FS, the Width/Height ratio is found as an operational factor to relate the space characteristic with the environmental performance and also with economic, social, visual factors. Also a real case, a residential area in Nanjing City, China is chosen to verify the feasibility of the system and the operability of the Width/Height factor.

The building and construction sector in Europe is the largest source of energy, CO2 and material consumption as well as waste production. It mostly relies on a linear building construction process. Not only materials and building elements must be demolished and disposed at the end of the life cycle of a building, but also a considerable amount of valuable raw materials therefore is lost. Due to a worldwide increasing need for construction activities, the construction industry is more and more under pressure. Counteracting it needs a completely new approach - the model of the circular economy - and the design of circular buildings. But, which requirements a circular building has to fulfill? The paper is incorporating the circular economy approach into architecture and presents a first tool to support the design of circular buildings in early planning stages.

Since 2015, the New York-based design studio No Architecture (NOA) has researched the history of vernacular and pre-industrial built environments in order to better understand indigenous solutions for climate-resilient development. Spatial and ecological performance analysis of our findings initially led to a catalog of vernacular outdoor microclimate morphologies, which we then translated into a higher-density proposal for an Ecodistrict located in Portland, Oregon’s Mediterranean climate. The interdisciplinary includes examinations of several dimensions of the early stages of a design process, including: underlying theoretical and historical frameworks; simulations of solar isolation and wind flow; and the elaboration of a set of flexible principals which can be adapted throughout climates with dry summer conditions. This proposal for a new “Rough Void” typology anticipates an alternate, climate-resilient trajectory for urban development.

The paper aims to critically analyze the housing policy Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awaas Yojana (PMAY), a social welfare flagship program, created by the Indian Government, to provide housing for the rural poor in India. The case study of Baiga tribe (aboriginals) is taken to understand its vernacular architecture and the impact of housing scheme on the Baiga’s traditional settlement. A brief study of settlement pattern is done. The dwellings provided by housing scheme are analysed on various aspects like architectural, social, cultural and economic, to identity the gap, why Government policy, schemes, development programme, and implementation fails to address the basic needs of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). Methodology includes literature review from various sources, site visit, photography, survey and interviews. Vernacular dwellings and the new dwellings provided by the scheme are documented and analysed. Result and findings addresses that the recommendations made in ‘the revised scheme of PVTGs’ 2015 by Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India under ‘Housing and Habitat’ is not taken in consideration by the implementing agencies. The paper concludes that Government must ensure the correct implementation of scheme at ground level. The scope of the paper is limited to Baiga tribe of Madhya Pradesh.

In complex processes of building design, any feature not directly related to the construction purpose may be deemed superfluous and including new steps relies therefore on usefulness and ease-of-adoption. In this paper, we aim to prove that LCA data undergoes the aforementioned consideration and that decreasing the entry barrier in the application maximizes penetration. This research and its companion tool leverage the moment when architectural decisions are most influential, empowering architects to impact the building’s sustainability throughout its full life cycle by visualizing carbon footprint projections in a very customizable and nimble way.

The building sector is responsible for significant consumption of natural resources. Sustainable buildings decrease environmental impacts such as energy consumption, soil, water and air pollution. Raw soil could be an alternative for the sustainable development of construction sector. Raw soil is cured without burning, mixed with Portland cement, pressed and stabilized producing soil-cement blocks, what are already regulated by the Brazilian Association Standardization. To increase its acceptance and verify its efficiency as a building material for social housing, it is necessary to investigate its properties and performance. The present study aimed to evaluate the performance of an external vertical sealing system composed of hollow blocks of soil-cement without structural function, following determinations of Brazilian standards, focusing on the requirements of habitability and sustainability. It was analysed tightness against rainwater, water permeability and durability through heat action and thermal shock tests. The system met limits set by standards for tightness against rainwater and heat action and thermal shock, but not for water permeability. The vertical sealing system composed of hollow blocks of soil-cement has potential for application in the construction, but there is still must be improved.

KEYWORDS: Soil-cement, Performance evaluation, Habitability, Sustainability

Generating walkable cities is a major stake for urban areas and the transformation of public open spaces, as streets, is a key process for it. Solar radiation exposure may be an important parameter for comfort of public spaces users. In the case of Quito, radiation levels are so high all years long this parameter is a strong health issue. While street refurbishment based on pedestrians and bikers’ requirements is still not a common practice in Ecuador, the present work proposes an approach of doing so based on simulating with ENVIMET two similar streets of Quito’s centre against thermal comfort and hence indirectly radiation exposure, one being highly vegetated and the other not. Simulations evaluate the energy exchange between street components considering their thermal characteristics, indicating the potential satisfaction level of pedestrians. The influence of street vegetation, especially the presence of large covering trees, is demonstrated as being strong. It allowed to propose an improvement process for the comfort deficient street, thus offering a potential larger solution for Quito’s streets configuration.

This study evaluates the building performance of an office building in London, which had issues reported concerning thermal comfort of occupants. The research aims to assess the occupants’ thermal comfort, and building performance of this building during the winter season. The study undertakes field studies including a questionnaire-based survey, and on-site monitoring as well as building simulation modelling to evaluate the building performance and to validate a simulation model to be used in the second phase of the study concerning energy efficient and cost effective retrofit proposals.

Townhouses in a hot and humid region require an economic solution to improve their indoor thermal condition and energy efficiency. One way is by enhancing ventilation to reduce collective heat and promote cooling effect for the residents. A townhouse unit in Chonburi province, Thailand was selected as a case study to investigate effects of a ventilation system on its indoor thermal performance. Results from the field measurement during summer in 2017 showed that, with closed building condition, the use of ventilation system during 2 hours before the residents return home could not provide sufficient air velocities for comfort but effectively reduce the room temperatures and humidities. This could result in energy saving for nighttime air-conditioning system.

Productivity and Satisfaction of the building occupants is largely influenced by Thermal Comfort. Specifically, in Factory buildings where occupants are constantly exposed to excessive heat produced from machines, it is important to maintain comfortable indoor environment and therefore evaluation of the comfort conditions inside these buildings is necessary. The research aims at assessment of naturally ventilated factory buildings located inside a Factory Premise in Mumbai. Three factory buildings with similar process and architectural features having different orientation and sizes were selected for assessment. The assessment was done based on onsite measurements and thermal comfort survey of the occupants. Key reasons behind discomfort were identified. Based on this assessment and comparison with standards, design guidelines were formulated. There is further scope for validating effect of passive design strategies with the help of Building Simulation

This paper discusses how the existing urban houses in a hot humid climate of Southeast Asia can adapt to the future increase in urban temperature in the near future through building modifications. TRNSYS simulations were employed to investigate the indoor thermal environment under naturally ventilated conditions as well as to assess the effects of passive design techniques on the thermal comfort and cooling load under the current and future weather conditions in a typical row house in Hanoi, Vietnam. The results show that the passive design techniques perform well to lower the operative temperature but they are not able to satisfy the thermal comfort in the future weather condition. Further, the cooling load is predicted to increase by up to 23% in the future.

With the availability of high quality remote sensing data, the phenomena of urban heat island has been well documented over the past two decades. Various mitigation measures, including changes to urban form, construction material, etc. have been suggested; however, these factors tend to be static and have a long gestation period. Water and forest body have higher specific heat compared to urban built up and thus have a lower surface temperature during the afternoon, when the temperature generally peaks. Many indigenous civilizations have used this ‘cooling effect’, but the effectiveness of water and forest bodies on cooling is poorly understood. This study uses remote sensing data, specifically, thermal imagery from Landsat 7 and 8 satellites to calculate the quantity and range of cooling due to the combined presence of water body and green strip along the water’s shore. The study finds that in the studied area, the cooling effect ranges from 1.1 to 3.9˚ C but with a maximum effective range of 360 meters under the favourable wind conditions. The short range of cooling effect raises questions if green-blue infrastructure can be an effective way to combat UHI in the dense urban area where land is scarce and expensive.

Retrofit of naturally ventilated educational building is an effective solution to the thermal and visual discomfort problems of the occupants. A residential school, located in outskirts of Hyderabad, India. The school functions in an International Baccalaureate (IB) Curriculum. The building has IGBC Platinum rating. The project deals with the retrofit procedure of the Senior Academic Block, which is naturally ventilated. The procedure involved assessment of the existing conditions through climate analysis, thermal images, measurements & occupant surveys. The retrofit design proposal was then presented to the owners and further prioritization and optimization of the scenarios were done based on thermal and daylighting simulations. The tools used for the analysis were EDSL TAS and LightStanza. Replacement of windows and addition of a low-energy cooling system (evaporative cooler) was identified as the best solutions.

The techniques applied in this paper were planned to minimise the additional energy and capital costs required for achieving occupant thermal comfort in Chilean residential buildings. Extensive analytical work is reviewed here to assess the influence of building design and occupant envelope-controls on auxiliary space-conditioning energy. Results of simulations indicate that indoor comfort temperatures can be achieved all year long at low extra capital and without recourse to traditional space-heating and cooling. The methods applied here for central Chile outline guiding principles for designing naturally conditioned dwellings across the main inhabited region of the country.

Risks of urban heat island (UHI) on the outdoor comfort and human health are rising in the trends of high-density urbanism. Green façade (GF) is one of the technologies which interested by researchers and architects because of the effects of the diminution on UHI, urban acoustic, and air pollution. This paper focuses on the shading effect of the GFs on the semi-outdoor thermal environment. A student dormitory with GFs is invited to investigate on a summer day in Munich, Germany. Through the measurements comparing the shaded and exposed area, results show that the Ave. and the Max. air temperatures (Temps) are decreased by 0.7℃ (W) and 2.1 ℃ (W), the Ave. surface Temp of the glazing is reduced by 1.2℃ (E), and which of the aluminium is reduced by 3.5℃ (W)in the shaded area. Results confirm the shading effect of the GFs and reveal the potential of the decreasing heat reflection on building façade to the surrounding environment.

The term "Profile" is often used in different disciplines to identify fundamental properties of an object, while analyzing future steps to use them. In this research, the concept of Energetic Profile for Existing Office Buildings and its features are presented. The Energetic Profile consists of seven architectural parameters ranging from macro to micro, taking into consideration its surrounding environment, the building’s morphological characteristics up to the typical floor plan design. The Energetic Profile enables the identification of energy saving opportunities and enables distinction between energetic-architectural typologies of office buildings which are not commonly discussed in environmental conscious standards. For each of the parameters a methodology was developed to investigate its total energy impact (divided into cooling, heating and lighting) in a theoretical office building located in a hot and humid climate. Performed case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the tool to identify potential action directions for energy savings, compare design alternatives, and examine the influence of various construction phases of the building. The case studies proved up to 50% in savings potential compared to current condition, when implementing the conclusions of the profile. Future contribution is expected as an auxiliary tool for designing also new office buildings.

Commercial and office buildings often have problems on the aspects of indoor thermal environment and energy performances. The actual performance of these types of buildings, most of the time, are different from the desired performance. A data collection was conducted in an office space of a university building in Singapore as part of the ongoing study, measuring the environmental performance of office buildings across Southeast Asian countries. The objective measurement on the thermal condition shows that most measurement points across office space is at the colder side of the comfort zone. This finding is supported by the survey results where only about 65% of occupants voted for “slightly cool”, “neutral” and “slightly warm” and about 22% of occupants showed “cold” related symptoms on their legs, hands and body at the end of working hours. The calculated neutral temperature range was generally from 24 degC to 26 degC, while the measured room temperature was mostly below 24 degC.

The first aim of this paper is to analyse the potential for application of hydrogen production and storage systems integrated with renewable energy sources, aimed to provide safe, efficient and stable energy solutions for building and transportation on isolated territories. The value of this concept will be checked on the examples of pilot and demonstration facilities developed for distant European islands. Several archipelagos belonging to different European countries were selected as case studies. The purpose of such choice is to investigate various climatic, geographic and legislative conditions determining the new opportunities that may bring benefits to cleaner and more sustainable environment. The second goal of this study is to check if/how European Union Framework Programmes contributed to the development of increased energy efficiency, independence and renewability in the isolated European territories.

CO2 emissions of buildings are progressively shifting from operation to other lifecycle stages. Despite the increasing importance of embodied carbon, it remains unregulated, without defined standards or industry benchmarks. This paper presents research findings from the analysis of five exemplary built precedents, comparing both operational and embodied CO2 emissions with benchmarks. Designed with a holistic approach, the whole-life carbon emissions from these buildings are shown to have been reduced by some 50%. Design guidelines resulting from study of these built precedents have been synthetized into a design application for central London, with estimated a 75% reduction in carbon emissions when compared to standard buildings.

This short paper provides a critical literature review of several domains in the field of daylighting design with respect to their lack of accountability to the chronobiological factors related to daylighting design. The review identifies deficiencies in the current metrics from the quantitative - instrumental, health-effective, to the qualitative – aesthetical to quantify the impacts of daylighting design on occupant’s health and well-being. To test the critical analysis, a pilot study was designed to provide a holistic view of how the integration of these domains can address the application and architectural decision making for window design parameters. It is an attempt to elaborate on the glass industry’s research and aims to look at the effects of different window design parameters on the transmission of the electromagnetic spectrum within a space’s interior. More specifically, it investigates the effects of distance from a window on the transmission of daylight through clear glazing and how the daylighting quantities and qualities transmitted affect occupant health and well-being, with a focus on circadian entrainment. This proof of concept study is seen as a first step to investigate long-debated hypotheses on the mechanisms of daylighting impacts on occupant’s health and well-being.

This study investigates the relationship between solar radiation received on vertical building façades and two sky exposure performance indicators, i.e. Sky View Factor (SVF) and Sky Exposure Factor (SEF). The study was conducted by using Ladybug for Grasshopper to perform solar radiation simulation on over 300 cases of archetypal urban forms with different morphological settings. Regression analysis was then applied to examine the relationship between X and Y. The findings suggest that though both SVF and SEF have a high goodness-of-fit with solar radiation on vertical building façades (R2 = 0.69 and 0.70 respectively), site coverage should be used as a categorising factor for improved assessment.

A ThermO-Drain (TOD) is a system that uses water cooled by night sky to drain the radiant heat within a building. In office buildings, ‘all air-cooled’ systems are most prevalent. The study aimed to assess the thermal comfort of occupants in a ground and two storied naturally ventilated office building in the composite climate of Nashik in India where TOD system was installed. Assessment was conducted by taking hourly readings over a 25-hour period in peak summer of May 2017. Primary data collected included Dry Bulb Temperature (DBT) and Relative Humidity (RH) indoors, surface temperature of top and bottom of roof slab and Globe temperature within the office. Secondary data for the same period was obtained from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). Monthly electricity bills were used to measure the Energy Performance Index (EPI). The Tropical Summer Index (TSI), an index suggested in the National Building Code (NBC) 2016 of India, was calculated. Results show that the indoor operative temperature in the peak of summer with outdoor temperature of 36.30C was found to be close to the neutral temperature of 27.50C. The EPI of 26.5 kwh/m2/year falls within the BEE 5-star rating of below 40 kwh/m2/year.

This paper describes a project to propose a National Energy Efficiency Policy for Cambodia. The project was initiated by the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy of Cambodia (MIME). The European Union Energy Initiative Professional Dialogue Facility (euei pdf) provided funding and Integration Consulting Group management. The policy was written by a team of five experts who met in Cambodia over a period of eight months (2012-2013). The areas of expertise comprised energy efficiency in industry, consumer goods, biomass, rural electrification, and buildings. This paper will describe the author’s contribution as building expert, and will therefore focus on energy efficiency in buildings. Its purpose is to share experience with other developing countries, to solicit helpful suggestions from those with similar experience and expertise, and to promote this on-going effort.

Design of contemporary glass-box office buildings is unsuitable for the tropical climate of Uganda Overheating is commonplace in indoor spaces because glazed façades are exposed to beam radiation from all directions everyday, through the year. As a result high-energy loads are associated with space cooling. These energy loads are significant for the context where only 15% of the population has access to electricity accompanied by regular load shedding and black outs. This research posits that shading to reduce cooling energy loads coupled with PV generation can improve overall energy availability for the country.

The paper presents a proposal for a Student Centre in Northern Greece. The proposed building is located at an existing educational unit in a densely vegetated environment and includes a high level of transparency to increase contact with its surroundings. Environmental strategies focusing on energy efficiency and natural resources preservation aim to balance the effects of extensive glazing through minimising winter heat loss and summer overheating while enhancing the benefits from natural daylight and natural ventilation. The preliminary estimation of the building’s environmental performance through simulations revealed almost 47% reduction on heating and cooling loads by implementing sustainable design strategies, and more than 20KWh energy production by pv cells integrated on the building envelope, as well as appropriate daylight conditions. Further simulations demonstrate in detail energy consumption requirements, pollutant emissions, daylight levels and occupants’ comfort.

In most European countries, new energy directives on building performance have been developed as a consequence of unsustainable greenhouse gas emissions. These norms promote active and passive energy strategies to lower the environmental impact of the building sector. Among the active strategies, building envelopes with Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) have a significant potential to generate clean electricity. However, despite the numerous advantages of BIPV products, diverse barriers are preventing their large-scale implementation. Many architects complain about their poor aesthetics as well as the lack of information on existing BIPV solutions, which leads to a generalized lack of interest on BIPV among building stakeholders. Aiming at overcoming these barriers, an interdisciplinary research team has designed and constructed the Advanced Active Façade (AAF) full-scale demonstrator. The mock-up integrates active and passive energy strategies such as BIPV and low-carbon construction principles, to meet the latest façade energy requirements. The AAF demonstrator approaches BIPV integration from an architectural perspective and showcases a new BIPV panel composition which widens the range of BIPV façade design opportunities. The ultimate objective of the AAF demonstrator is to generate an active façade architectural reference, while providing architects with an assessed low-carbon façade construction system.

The urban sustainability assessment is the key to evaluate environmental, social and economic issues at various levels. This paper aims to devise and evaluate a set of sustainability indicators to assess the impacts of urban development on Indian hill settlements. New Tehri Township in Uttarakhand is taken as a case study for the analysis, that was planned to resettle the residents of settlements affected by Tehri dam. Qualitative content analysis (QCA) method have been employed in the study to select the sustainability indicators for proposing a sustainability framework and performing spatial analysis using a GIS-based tool. Previous scholarly literature has shown that a set of indicators are very useful for developing qualitative and quantitative variables of urban environments. The analysis has shown that topography, the climate of the place, appropriate urban layout, transportation and connectivity, extent of open spaces and adequate solar exposure play a major role in promoting sustainable development and ensuring a better quality of life in a hill settlement. Also, a conceptual sustainability assessment framework provides an indexing model to the planners and designers to be used as a decision support tool in curbing the negative consequences of development in environmentally sensitive hill areas.

Climate change is disrupting our planet’s natural cycles and the steep socio-economic growth together with rapid urbanisation are increasing the uncertainty of its effects. During the last decades, frequency and impact of flash floods and droughts in Mediterranean and Middle-East regions has substantially increased and will continue to rise due to these new variations. Buildings and local architecture in these areas must be adapted to avoid future damages. However, disaster prevention will not be truly effective until the ‘human factor’ is considered, based on actual evidence. Better research into how communities are affected by disasters and how they re-act with new architectural solutions is urgently needed.

In 2007, one Spanish town was tragically affected by the Girona River flash-floods and its population and buildings were severely disrupted. This case study was chosen as the main testing ground within this research, whose main aims were: a) to identify environmental retrofit strategies to increase resilience and adaptation to flooding, while improving comfort and living conditions; and, b) to present the proposed strategies to the affected local population. The project revealed insights in the increased level of acceptance and understanding of innovative solutions by local inhabitants when greater communication and participation is achieved.

This paper investigated the effectiveness of high solar reflectance paints in three building types—houses, medium rise residential buildings, and factories—in the tropical climate of Bangkok, Thailand. It was found that high reflective paint, when applied to the walls and/or roofs of buildings, could reduce electricity used in air conditioning systems up to 21.6-49.8% for a house, 7.6-15.8% for a medium rise residential building, and 7.6-61.7% for a factory. Results also showed that the total solar reflectance or TSR property had a higher impact on reducing energy demand than the thermal emittance property of the paints. When the heat resistance property of construction materials increases, the effectiveness of high reflective paint decreases.

Setting Zero Net Energy Performance goals for large building stocks such as University Campuses can have a great effect on mitigating climate change impact, especially in locations such as Hawai’i, where resources and energy are limited. This paper describes the content and the methods used to develop the Building Design and Performance Standards for the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM BDPS). They help achieve this goal and other building performance and energy use related State mandates while responding to the climate and environmental priorities of the region of Hawaii. The UHM BDPS are based on a location-specific set of sustainable goals extracted from current industry standard documents along with the results of extensive performance simulations. They address the project phases and teams involved, and include pre-design information to develop procurement documentation, design strategies and requirements for building performance, water conservation, and other principles of sustainable operational models. These Standards also address the building operation phase and describe the framework to provide real-time information to document the progress in achieving the ZNE and other progressive campus sustainability goals overtime, in addition to identifying operation and maintenance issues.

ABSTRACT: There is an increasingly urgent need to cut global CO2 emissions and thereby avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. In the EU construction sector, action has already begun to help minimise carbon emissions and reverse their current negative impact on the environment. These initiatives have so far been based on introducing the mandatory construction of “Nearly–Zero-Energy Buildings” (NZEBs) from 2018 onwards, in compliance with an EU Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings (2010/31/EU) [1]. The NZEB project not only constitutes a technical challenge but also a challenge for the design process. It must be accompanied by the introduction of new, specialised programmes at Schools of Architecture. This article points out how this quest for design strategies to produce NZEBs has been converted into pedagogical content in the Polytechnic University of Catalonia’s (UPC) MSc in “Architecture & Sustainability: Design Tools & Environmental Control Techniques”. As an example of the work done and the results obtained, we present a project designed for a residential building in Barcelona, Spain. This was developed by a team of students from the MSc course and presented as their final project.

The world’s cities are growing in size and number. At the same time, the global climate change rise global average temperatures as well as increase weather extreme events. Sao Paulo, the 5th urbanized region in the world, has currently more than 21 million inhabitants and recent studies alert for the increased frequency of extreme climate events in the city. Therefore, this work deals with the role of planning, urban and building design for climate change adaptation in the microscale. The aim is to quantify the impacts on urban microclimate, based on present and future climate scenarios, regarding: 1) urban density; 2) building envelope and other urban surfaces; 3) green infrastructure; and 4) thermal performance and comfort in buildings, during occasional heat waves or for the projected IPCC AR-5 scenarios of climate change. For this purpose, a research project was structured at the Architecture and Urbanism school [4] approaching the interdependencies between urban morphology and microclimate in São Paulo, aiming to discuss urban design alternatives to counterbalance urban warming effects in a subtropical changing climate. This paper briefly summarizes what we have learnt with remote sensing, measurements and numerical simulation in the metropolitan, local and building scales and present partial results.

Building energy performance optimization requires an integrated design approach to explore and evaluate alternative strategies for energy saving and to improve construction process management. Energy efficiency education into architecture and engineering curriculum should address economic, social and environmental issues arising from the technology as well, training professionals and technicians who wish to be able to develop core skills in those subject areas according to a multidisciplinary educational approach. This paper presents the experience of a Post-graduated Master Degree Program at University of Florence, Master ABITA, that includes studies on low energy architecture and energy efficiency measures, integration of renewable energies in buildings, Building Information Modelling and Energy Simulation Analysis tools.

This paper discusses with examples, a course that introduces net zero energy carbon and energy modeling in large lecture courses. Several strategies were implemented: integrating design in technical courses, reducing the number of variables to consider in a design problem, increasing understanding of the physics of energy and buildings and increasing expertise in the use of analogue and digital tools. The course is conducted in both lecture and seminar/lab formats and it involves theory, practical applications, calculations, hands-on experiments and a main project in which students integrate energy model in the design process of a zero net energy project. All 49 student projects for the 2016 and 2017 courses are collected in two books, “Going to Zero” and “Going to Zero 2017”.

The aim of the architectural design thesis is to study the potential benefit of implementing passive design in an adaptive reuse project. From studies, several types of adaptive reuse together with its building elements were identified. Next, the potential of each adaptive reuse type was explored to determine the relevance of implementing each type to a unique project. The potential approaches were applied to an unused naturally-ventilated railway depot in Seremban, Malaysia to find out further improvements that can be added. Finally, several suggestions were made to improve the passive design potential through these various types of adaptive reuse for the aforementioned heritage building.

Three low energy luminaire projects, in which architecture and design students participated, utilizing LEDs, local materials and/or 3D printing were evaluated in this study: A) temporary luminaire compositions featuring local material assemblies produced in graduate architecture student charrettes in Thailand, illuminated with LEDs, assembled and photographed as part of a Fulbright workshop; B) 3D printed prototypes of luminaires produced by interior design students exploring light and shadow patterns and exploring a new modeling technology and C) U.S. EPA-funded LED desk lamp project by undergraduate students; exhibited at the National Sustainability Expo. The three projects’ requirements were different. A and C had an emphasis on available material and sustainability, B had a technology emphasis and used biodegradable material. Researchers found students’ luminaire design projects exhibited a great deal of variation across the convenience sample (n= 5, 22 and 18 for A, B and C respectively). Team compositions and disciplines varied. The use of various attributes: 3D printing; sustainable, local, or “found” materials; technology; light sources; and universities’ facilities’ with workshop availability varied across the projects. For B, 73% of participants reported the use of 3-D printing improved their effectiveness as an Interior Designer. Each project presented a unique learning opportunity.

The 5-year cycle of residential planning in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) has underestimated population growth since 1991. This has resulted in the disruptive and uncontrolled expansion of settlement across the city. The outcome is a complicated mix of new spontaneous dwelling areas in the city featuring a number of distinct urban morphologies. Some previous studies have shown impacts of such urban morphologies on the comfort levels in outdoor environments. The paper examines the correlation of microclimatic conditions and constituents that create the urban spatial form of residential neighbourhoods in HCMC. A total of seven dwelling urban patterns were studied. Field measurements of physical variables were conducted in summer 2017 whilst the meteorological data were recorded. Furthermore, in studies of two urban types, the microclimatic characteristics were found to vary under different urban contexts. During warm months, the outdoor thermal conditions for pedestrians were found to have average air temperatures between 32-34°C; a range of wind flow at the occupied level from 0.1-0.9m/s, and average humidity level of 57-60% over all types surveyed. The occupants’ delight in outdoor comfort was found in formally planned dwelling blocks; meanwhile, the compact neighbourhoods were characterised by cooler temperatures but poor airflows and daylighting.

The study investigated potentials of rice husk ash (RHA) as a replacement for Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) in the production of Compressed Earth Block (CEB) with a view to reducing building construction cost in Nigeria. Graded levels (i.e. 10, 20, 30 and 40%) of RHA replaced cement in the mix for CEB moulding. The results of X-ray diffraction showed that RHA contained 80% SiO2. Also, the results of the compressive strength, water absorption capacity, and bulk density testing indicated that low compressive strength, high water absorption capacity, and low bulk density exhibited by RHA-CEB make doubtful the suitability of RHA as a replacement for Ordinary Portland cement in the building construction in

This study presents an analysis of the outdoor conditions Indian cities to determine the potential for deploying natural ventilation and several low-energy cooling strategies in residential buildings to lead the country on the path of becoming an energy efficient economy. The analysis showed that the potential for natural ventilation increased substantially when the temperature limits were based on the IMAC model for mixed-mode buildings. Locations in the composite climate showed the potential for a mix of operation modes/strategies while those in warm and humid indicated dehumidification as a prominent strategy.

As the demand for urban living space has expanded dramatically in China, high-rise/high-density residential quarters gradually evolved into an inevitable urban living pattern. Because gated residential quarters have given rise to a series of urban social and economical problems, a recent trend in residential development is the so-called open residential neighbourhoods (ORN) or open urban block. Due to smaller plot size, mixed functions and more open geometry, the microclimatic effect of building form, layout and greenery can be different with that of typical gated housing quarters in Shanghai under the hot-summer cold-winter building climate zone. By selecting a typical block as object, this paper conducted parameterized numerical simulation to verify and quantify the impact of different building layout and greenery type on outdoor microclimate of ORN, and to provide reference for optimizing the layout of high density residential quarters, as well as design strategies for the actual planning and evaluation process.

This case study applies life-cycle assessment methods to the preliminary design of an office building in order to quantify the benefits achieved when reusing its load-bearing components. Results show that the production of the load-bearing system would account for 40% of the global warming potential indicator. The slabs are responsible for 65% of the environmental impacts among all structural elements and should be considered for reuse first. Compared to traditional constructions built from first-use material, a fictitious reuse of undamaged load-bearing components over three consecutive use cycles would reduce the global warming potential indicator by 25%. The global warming potential of reuse is eventually computed according to three repartition methods, highlighting the need to separate the life-cycle footprints related to production, use, and end-of-life more systematically.

The built environment is facing environmental regulations more ambitious than ever before. In Europe, a law will lead all new buildings to the Nearly Zero-Energy performance level. However, even if a building does not have any energy consumption for its operation phase, it still has embodied impacts. To that end, Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods have been developed and improved since the 1960s. However, LCAs are still not used as a standard practice among the architecture, engineering and construction industry. This study aims to discover the reasons for the low use of life-cycle performance approaches thanks to a web survey targeting practitioners, and to formulate key recommendations to improve their usability. This research reveals the low penetration rate of LCA software among building designers due to their limited efficiency within the design context. The main reasons for this situation are the cost of use, too heavy for the early design stage constraints, and the functionality, which is limited to the environmental assessment. Indeed, practitioners expect much more design support functionalities (multi-criteria approach, exploration mode, etc.). The survey findings aim to support the usability improvement of new LCA-based methods and the research and development of new tools at early design stages.

There is a growing consensus on the influences of heat waves and increased temperature as among the most threatening climate change phenomena to human mortality. In addition, the effect of heat waves is exacerbated significantly in cities as a result of urban heat islands effect. Such intensification of heat waves combined by potentially prolonged periods of extreme temperature will pose huge risks on human mortality in the built environment. Over the past decade, a number of metrics in literature have been developed to assess human thermal risks and their response to extreme climate conditions. However, most of these metrics take into account socioeconomic factors, housing characteristics and climatic risks without looking at the spatial characteristics across the city. Yet, the combination of these factors on an urban resolution haven’t been largely explored yet, specifically for vulnerable population with low access to adaptation resources and minimum potentials for ventilation. The paper presents the framework of an urban vulnerability index based on identifying parameters that correlate with thermal discomfort on urban block level and building level. The study analyzes a historical residential neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt to examine the applicability of the proposed index in understanding levels of vulnerability under extreme temperatures.

Buildings consume 33% of total energy (24% domestic and 9% commercial) in India and this is growing at 8% per annum hence, there is a need for energy efficiency in the building sector. The revised version of Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) was published in June 2017 after ten years. The new version of ECBC goes beyond minimum compliance and has two additional levels of ECBC ‘plus’ and ‘super’ which include prescriptive requirements and alternative performance goals based on energy use intensity. This paper assesses the energy savings and payback period for the prescriptive of ECBC-2017, minimum compliance, plus and super levels for an office building in Vishakhapatnam. It also demonstrates alternative cost optimized solutions for these three levels of ECBC. The office building is a real building in design stage according to the current construction trends that do not comply with previous ECBC version 2007 for all building systems. The availability & cost of equipment and material to reach the ECBC 2017 levels is are assessed with a market survey. Since ECBC 2017 is a new code that has yet to be adopted by local building departments, this study shows the energy benefits for ECBC minimum compliance, ECBC plus and ECBC super levels. Further, this paper also demonstrates how simulations can be used to find more cost-effective approaches to reach ECBC 2017 performance levels using the whole building compliance approach.

Today, most of the people spend 80-90% of the time indoors either in the office or at home. Indoor air is contaminated by human activities and building materials which emit volatile organic compounds. Exposure to these compounds has a short and long-term impact on health. It is therefore important to provide a healthy and productive indoor environment. Acceptable indoor air quality can be maintained by operating a building in natural ventilation, and this can also reduce energy consumption. The water table is an inexpensive, easily accessible apparatus that helps to analyze natural ventilation in buildings due to wind effect and provides instantaneous two-dimensional results of airflow patterns in and around the building. This paper provides and tests a methodology to objectively quantify the images from the water table simulations and calculate results for ventilation metrics like percentage of dead spots, absolute ventilation efficiency, air changes per hour, dose and room mean age of air that quantifies air movement within a physical building model simulated in the apparatus. The quantitative method will help for comparative analysis between design options and make design decisions in terms of opening sizes, orientation, and appropriate positioning of openings optimized for wind-driven naturally ventilated buildings.

There is a possibility that the sick building syndrome has already spread widely among the newly constructed apartments in major cities of Indonesia. This study investigates the current conditions of indoor air quality, focusing especially on formaldehyde and TVOC, and their effects on health among occupants in the urban houses located in the city of Surabaya. A total of 471 respondents were interviewed and 82 rooms were measured from September 2017 to January 2018. The results indicated that around 50% of the respondents in the apartments showed some degrees of chemical sensitivity risk. More than 60% of the measured formaldehyde levels in the apartments exceeded the WHO standard, 0.08 ppm. The respondents living in rooms with higher mean formaldehyde values tended to have higher multiple chemical sensitivity risk scores.

A semi-empirical multilayer urban canopy model is developed to estimate vertical dispersion of traffic emissions in high density urban areas. It is motivated by the heterogeneity of urban morphology in real urban cities and the need of quick urban design and planning. The urban canopy is divided into multiple layers, to include the impact of building height variance on pollutant dispersion. The model is derived by mass conservation within each layer through adopting a box model. The validation study indicates that the new multilayer model performs well to model the vertical pollutant transport, and modelling results can mostly follow the trend of the CFD simulations. A case study was conducted to illustrate how to implement this multilayer urban canopy model in the planning practice.

The need to achieve thermal comfort in residences and strong dependence of air conditioning systems has led to huge energy consumption. In order to reduce the energy consumption of residences and properly size the air conditioners, air leakage needs to be reduced by tighten the building envelope. One such approach to quantify the air leakage is the use of blower door, which uses a powerful calibrated fan to depressurize or pressurize the house at an induced pressure to measure air flow (air leakage) from the house. In this study, 23 residences of Ahmedabad, 12 bungalows and 11 apartments were measured for air leakage. The study is also a first step towards developing methodology to conduct an air tightness test in residential buildings. For comparison, mean normalized leakage (metric for air leakage) of the 23-measured residence was 2.1. Due to old age construction, bungalows have more leakages than apartments. High air flow rates can be observed in buildings with intentional openings, inferior quality windows and cracks on walls. Retrofitting those windows, sealing the intentional openings in an air-conditioned space can lead to huge energy savings for air-conditioned spaces.

Data from an experimental investigation, carried out during the summertime (from the end of July to mid-September, 2016), have been statistically analysed, with the purpose of proposing a post-instalment-evaluation technique by assessing the effects that some architectural features have on the indoor environmental conditions in a prototype of Plus Energy House in Southern-east France. The proposed correlation analysis is tested first, to evaluate its reliability for distinguishing strong from weak correlations. Since the proposed analysis appears to be acceptable, it was used then for studying the relationship between outdoor and indoor environments. Results from the correlation analysis strongly suggest that the impact of direct solar radiation on the indoor environment is well attenuated by the double-glazed windows with blinds implemented in the house.

Observed global warming trends undermine the conventional practice of using historic weather files, such as Typical Meteorological Year (TMY), to predict building performance during the design process. In order to limit adverse impacts such as improperly sized mechanical equipment or thermal discomfort, it is important to consider how the building will perform in the future. Like all passive design strategies, natural ventilation, relies on local climate to be effective in improving building performance. This paper uses future weather files with whole building energy simulations to assess the sensitivity and feasibility of natural ventilation in providing thermal comfort in three locations, representing different climate types. The results show how building performance, as measured by thermal comfort metrics, changes over time. Natural ventilation can provide a buffer against warming climate, but only to a certain extent. Future weather files are useful for identifying where and when there is a risk that an entirely passive design is no longer feasible.

This paper investigates the potential of Local Climate Zones (LCZ) maps to identify vegetation loss in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region. LCZ maps from 2002 and 2017 were produced according to the World Urban and Database Portal Tool methodology for acquiring Level 0 data. A change detection analysis was performed to compare the two maps. The identification of vegetation loss through changes in LCZ types showed promising results as a free tool to monitor vegetation dynamics due to urban development, with great suitability for local government use.

This study demonstrates how the design of bimetallic facade screens can provide passive climate control for high thermal mass walls in hot climates with large diurnal temperature swings. Three tests were performed using measurements for air temperature, heat flux, and thermal imaging that show solar shading potential of a bimetallic screen in front of a generic wall surface. Results revealed significant thermal reduction to the wall surface and helped identify key environmental, material, geometric, and performance parameters that can influence design. Local temperature differences, bimetallic coefficients of expansion, length, thickness, screen depth and porosity had a considerable influence on performance parameters such as deflection, solar shading, and heat flux reduction.

Due to their high resolutions, microclimate models have high computational demand causing rather long simulation times and limiting the size of model areas. As such limited model areas only cover a small part of the atmosphere, the boundary conditions driving the microclimate simulation play a crucial role in determining the quality of the simulation. In order to incorporate larger scale processes and to ensure the boundary conditions represent the actual conditions at a model’s border, a nesting module was implemented into ENVI-met. Using the new module, coupled simulations can be run where a (smaller) model area is nested into a larger model domain that provides horizontally and vertically dynamic boundary conditions. Since the surrounding larger model domain is typically simulated at a coarser spatial resolution, downscaling methods need to be applied. In the present study the nesting algorithms that manage the extraction of model outputs and the downscaling onto the nested model area’s resolution are presented. Furthermore, a nested model run using a large WUDAPT obtained host model domain is compared against a standard model run using simple forcing boundary conditions. The results showed that nesting provides a reliable way to provide boundary conditions to high resolution, microscale climate simulations.

This paper presents a methodology intended to integrate building performance modelling and urban microclimate studies and explore their interaction at different heights. In this study, Urban Weather Generator (UWG) is used to evaluate urban microclimates across a 3-dimensional landscape. UWG can calculate the effect of Urban Heat Islands (UHI) on temperature across a 2-dimensional landscape but does not consider wind effects. A new methodology is presented in this paper to model urban microclimates more accurately. Using London as a case study, high-rise office building performance at different heights is examined. The variation of urban microclimate with height and relative to the rural weather data is reported through evaluation of its impact on building performance.

In order to reveal the distributed rule of solar radiation for building heating in the Western China, south oriented surface solar radiation, optimal inclination angle solar radiation of solar PV panels and heating degree days were used as districted indicators to study the solar radiation zoning in western China. Method of mode calculation was used to obtain the missing data of south oriented surface solar radiation. 4 cities are selected as verification points to obtain the critical direct solar radiation needed for calculation. Through the comparison of the 3 models, the direct solar radiation calculation model suitable for the western region is found. According to the ten-year average of the above three indicators, the clustering analysis method was used to get the solar radiation zones for building thermal utilization in the Western China. The rule of solar radiation intensity of each zone was summarized from the perspective of building heating.

Energy demand calculations are very common nowadays due to various regulations and assessment methods around the world. Depending on local regulations they are usually carried out with either simplified steady-state energy balances or with dynamic simulations. Hereby, most stead-state calculations are based on the same temperature difference between inside and outside over a whole heating period or on monthly mean values compared to hourly data for transient calculations. In a case study on a sandwich-lightweight structure it became evident that dynamic calculations with transient weather data show results where the energy demand is approximately up to 50 % lower than steady-state calculations according to a German standard. Therefore, steady-state calculations cannot be recommended without restriction e.g. for sustainability assessment.

The YKK 80 building located in central Tokyo aims to realise better energy saving and thermal comfort compared to a conventional radiant cooling system by utilising a slight airflow to improve comfort criteria and relaxation. This paper presents the actual performance of an advanced radiant cooling system based on a mock-up experimental study and on-site investigations into the occupied building. As a result of investigations, the actual performance of the system is verified.

The YKK 80 building was awarded first place in the ASHRAE Technology Award 2017 and was certificated as LEED CS Platinum in 2016.

The ideology of Passivhaus is clear. It is a building standard associated with a really well insulated and airtight building that saves energy – in both hot and cold climates. There is evidence from that shows how important this approach to building is in achieving carbon reduction targets. Passivhaus is a credible way for large scale energy reduction in the built environment and has gained in popularity with policy makers tasked with meeting the internationally agreed climate change targets. The reality of living in a Passivhaus is not so clear. There is evidence of some Passivhaus projects using much more energy than the design models anticipate. There is also emerging evidence of the difficulties some people face in living in a Passivhaus. Issues of air quality, systems control problems, inadequate technical knowledge and skills. While the overall picture is positive there are clearly issues to be overcome in the delivery of a promising carbon reduction strategy for the built environment. This research explores the limitation of the PHPP software in addressing the lived experience of Passivhaus. The emerging issues with some PH projects suggest a better understanding of the interactions between people and the building is required.

Despite the recent pursuit towards Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB), their global adaptation is far from complete, mostly in cooling dominated climates which are still poorly prepared for their integration. This paper reports on a research project aiming to build a road map for the local adaptation of the ZEB concept in Israel. The methodology of this research was based on a statistical top-down feasibility analysis which explored the possibility of 10 different urban typologies to achieve zero energy balance using the Load Match Index as the performance metric. Results demonstrated large potential variations between residential and office uses as well as between different typologies to deliver zero energy balance in the Israeli context. Findings helped generate detailed criteria and four different models for Zero Energy Buildings in Israel towards new policy.

With the upgrading of education mode and the architecture discipline development in the informatization context, modern architecture education has gradually shifted from top-down elitism education to bottom-up humanism education, the contradiction between the traditional enclosed space and the growing demand of the Architecture Department Building's environment is the key to the development of architecture education. For cities in cold region, the quality of the architecture education space is threatened by severe cold climate. In the informatization context, optimizing spatial environments is facing severe challenges. Based on the theory of interaction demand and bioclimatology, this paper takes the School of Architecture of Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) as an example, proposes regeneration strategies and conducts CFD simulation to verify the effectiveness of the design which provides reference to the traditional Architecture Department Building's redevelopment in the cold region.

A lot has been written about sustainability and sustainable development in the recent times, but a clear meaning of the term still remains elusive. Socio-economic-cultural factors such as the prevalent world-view in a society greatly influence environmental behaviour of people. Materialistic consumer culture and the urge to consume resources without restraint to gratify personal desire have a negative correlation with pro-environmental behaviour. It is therefore, important to understand how socio-economic-cultural factors influence the need to consume resources. This study aims to assess the intensity of perception of needs in people in the context of their socio-economic-cultural conditions. Primary data was collected through a survey conducted in several cities, towns and villages in India across different socio-economic-cultural scenarios. The respondents were asked to rate the intensity of needs in various categories (adopted from Maslow’s need hierarchy) on a five-point scale ranging from very strong need to not essential. Scores for intensity of perceived need were calculated for each respondent for each need type. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was done to see if the different settlement types and economic classes showed statistically significant variance in the intensity of needs. Significant variance was observed between different settlement types and economic classes.

Pedestrian environment is the key to walking in the neighbourhood. Complex settings in Hong Kong creates both opportunities and challenges to walkability in urban areas. Urban planning and neighbourhood design are important elements to support walking as a means of active transportation. It therefore requires better understanding of the relationship between walking behaviour and the built environment in order to improve the walkability in Hong Kong. The present study examined the effect of built environment on walking behaviour at both neighbourhood and district levels. Initial findings showed that the number of walk trips is associated with road density, land use mix and the level of PM2.5. At district level, walking behaviour, in terms of walking time and percentage of long walking trips, is associated with road density and land use mix respectively. It suggests that neighbourhood characteristics are influential to walking behaviour and the design of neighbourhood environment can potentially promote active transportation. Further studies will focus on including more factors related to walking environment and behaviour. Studies with finer spatial scales will also be important for the design of the street environment which promotes walking and healthier lifestyle in high-density cities.

Healthy environments are essential to prevent disease while promoting health and well-being. Healthy people and communities substantially contribute to sustainability. The design of the built environment in an education context is of high priority, providing architecture students with a healthy and comfortable education environment could contribute to a better cognitive experience, less absenteeism, greater students and lecturers’ productivity and better social relationships. The methodology proposed here is called Nurturing Environments Assessment Method (NEAM), and focuses on the health and well-being of building users´. It is based on a POE methodology; however, the NEAM applied here includes: A Space Occupancy Survey, a Users’ Survey (mood and perception of the building) and physical measurements of the interior environment. 99 students and 19 staff members participated in the surveys. The NEAM proved to be a useful tool to assess the quality of a building. The case study building needs to be fully equipped with furniture for students to relax and work. Solutions must consider improving ventilation, acoustics and lighting levels inside lecture rooms. In addition, strategies to make this building safer during evacuation in case of fires or earthquakes are essential for the wellbeing of occupants.

In the winter of 2014-15 an estimated 43,900 excess winter deaths occurred, 85% of which were in older people. There is a clear link between cold homes and poor health, especially in older people, as sub-optimally heated homes increase the risk of health problems that are particularly prevalent in this demographic. By 2050 a quarter of the UK population will be aged 65 and over, with the greatest population increases being seen in the octogenarian and older categories. Investigating thermal comfort in the over 65 demographic is key to ensuring that older people are able to stay healthy and comfortable in their homes. To date, thermal comfort models are based on working age populations habiting office buildings throughout a working day. This paper seeks to validate how suitable current thermal comfort models are in predicting comfort levels of older people in their homes. In this study indoor temperature data from 30 homes occupied by people aged 65 and over, together with thermal comfort data was collected during the measurement period November 2016 to March 2017. This data enabled the theoretical outputs from Fanger’s model to be correlated with the measured temperatures to validate the model.

Evaporative cooling has been proved as one of the most efficiency strategies to cool down air temperature. In this paper, the performance of a device that combine the sun protection with fresh ventilation using evaporative cooling is presented. This strategy has been used as heat exchanger in vertical set up, but this configuration precludes the solar protection. The experimental trial was taken in Colima, Mexico, where the climate is classified as hot sub-humid Aw0, according to Köppen. In the experimental stage, two equal devices were compared. One of the remained as control and the other one using water to apply the indirect evaporative cooling as a case. The maximum difference of temperature between the entrance air and the exit was of 8 K° in the experimental cell versus 5.5 K° of the reference cell. Indirect evaporative cooling strategy improves the reduction of heat exchange around the device. This allows to used louvers to block solar radiation and to pre-cold the air before introducing it to the space.

Currently, the approach to social housing development in Chile has proved incapable of ensuring appropriate living standards. Demolishing housing blocks to replace them with new buildings is economically inefficient, environmentally damaging and socially unacceptable. This research focuses on the CORVI 1010-1020 housing block type that was massively built between 1968 and 1978. Today it is possible to find more than 2,000 of these buildings—with no significant design variations—throughout Chile, hence between latitudes 18°S and 53°S of extremely diverse climates.

This paper analyses the impact of different energy retrofitting strategies in the thermal performance of these buildings. Building energy simulation is used to evaluate three scenarios, i.e., the original design, a retrofitting proposal that meets the current code, and an expansion proposal that increases both thermal performance and life quality conditions. Simulations focused on three cities with contrasting climates: hot-arid (Arica, 18°27'S), mediterranean (Santiago, 33°27′S) and tundra (Punta Arenas, 53°08′S). Operational energy demand, accumulated hours of thermal discomfort, and payback time periods are considered for comparative analysis.

Results evidence that proposals´ cost-effectiveness increases in colder climatic conditions; overall, this study demonstrates that retrofitting these buildings can help achieving significant heating and cooling energy savings and improving indoor thermal comfort conditions.

The successful deployment of distributed photovoltaic (PV) systems requires assessment of the potential of possible installations for electricity generation. Exposure to solar radiation in dense urban locations must account for shading by adjacent structures, at high spatial and temporal resolution. 3D modelling of the shadows cast by buildings is carried out with a new R package that can simulate the shadows cast on vertical surfaces (typically walls) or horizontal ones (typically roofs), given a database of obstacles representing buildings in the form of extruded polygons, and the sun’s position at any desired time interval. The methodology is demonstrated for a case-study neighbourhood in Rishon-LeZion, Israel, with diverse building typologies, but is suitable for any location, using the open-source code developed. The simulation shows which building typologies offer the greatest solar potential, calculated per dwelling, building plot area or for the entire neighbourhood. Although roofs are preferable to vertical surfaces, some facades can still make a substantial contribution to the overall solar potential of urban buildings.

This study focuses on developing a BIPV pre-design computational platform combining visual impact assessment, building simulation and energy system optimization. The outdoor exposed surface of a pavilion court building block is evaluated through a physiologically reliable indicator of visibility that determines three scenarios of PV coverage ratio. Solar PV generation and demand for heating and electricity are simulated on hourly basis. Hourly PV energy that does not match electricity needs is used to fit a multi energy hub featuring PV panels, a battery bank and an internal combustion generator. A Pareto optimization is conducted considering levelized cost of energy and grid integration level, without showing a dominant solution: this outcome encourages the development of a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tool.

It is common practice to use hourly dynamic thermal modelling for building design, yet climate responsive urban design, is often based on predominant wind directions analysed for particular ëtypicalí days or times. Such a snapshot view does not reflect how often these conditions occur and whether design changes based on single instances are warranted. This paper explores the efficacy of using an annual dynamic approach, by extending and comparing results from a previous study of district massing on local microclimate. These dynamic annual analyses were undertaken using a new cloud-based microclimate analysis tool that employs open source software for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and post-processing of results. This tool allows for complex hourly analyses of solar radiation, wind and comfort distribution to be conducted within a commonly used 3-D modelling software environment. Following the previous study, this paper compares the resulting urban form across three major issues: pedestrian comfort, air quality and building cross-ventilation potential. Pedestrian comfort assessment includes thermal comfort, using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) and wind comfort, using the Dutch standard NEN 8100. Air quality is approximated by air age distribution. Building ventilation potential is assessed by mapping pressure differentials at points on opposing building faces.

This research aims to provide some knowledge for architects and urban designers on urban public space form optimization in terms of wind environment during initial design stage. In this paper, different vertical opening layouts were investigated on the influence of different region’s spatial ventilation by CFD numerical modelling. Spatial mean velocity magnitude at pedestrian-level and air flow rate at space vertical opening and top boundaries were calculated to evaluate spatial ventilation. Simulation results show that appropriate vertical opening layouts could improve velocity magnitude of space’s recirculation area. When the inlet opening is not directly opposite the outlet opening, spatial mean velocity of some recirculation regions could be increased by 2 times. When the outlet opening is located at the boundaries of recirculation regions, the influence of opening layouts on airflow patterns are limited, with variation range below 30%

The use of solar chimneys for natural ventilation could contribute to a reduction of the energy consumption of buildings. For the planning process of solar chimneys, it is necessary to be able to predict the ventilation effectiveness precisely. In this paper, different analytical equations are compared to results from computational fluid dynamic simulations and experimental measurements. It was found that the investigated analytical methods neglect the occurrence of backflows which leads to an overestimation of the air flow for chimneys with a large depth. For an accurate result, detailed calculations with an adapted discharge coefficient are required to account for this effect.

The conservation of archive buildings is particularly important due to the generally sensitive material that they are intended to preserve. A detailed understanding of the heat, air, and moisture transport within these buildings is important to ensure that informed decisions may be taken in their design. A case study of the Notarial Archives in Malta is presented here; a historic building composed of thick walls and high ceilings with no damproofing; augmenting the problems of rising damp and indoor air quality. Therefore, the study provides a number of challenges to the conservation of such archives. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model was used to simulate such conditions, with the key focus on the validation of the model. Validation included the comparison of simulated data to data obtained during a monitoring cycle. The results highlight the effects of the boundary conditions on the space as well as other unsteady phenomena. The CFD model provided a more complete picture of the microclimate within such spaces that can aid a holistic conservation approach of such archives and their preservation for future generations.

This paper presents a workflow that informs urban design decisions using measured data clustering to calibrate Urban Building Energy Models (UBEMs). The method’s goal is to support urban design in terms of form, building systems configurations, as well as influencing user behaviour aspects in the built environment through a systemic analysis of measured data to develop reliable future-case design scenario energy models. Detailed data on appliance-level electricity use were employed via data clustering to calibrate a UBEM for the Mueller community in Austin, TX, USA. The data were collected by the Pecan Street Institute for a year in 2014 from consumers in Austin and other cities. Firstly, collected energy data was restructured and cleaned from corrupt and missing information. Secondly, in order to identify common energy use patterns, a model-based clustering algorithm for functional data was applied. Behavioural/usage profiles were determined through clustering and translated into usage schedules and behaviours. As a result, a UBEM built in the urban modelling interface (umi) was calibrated, with fully calibrated and semi calibrated buildings, within a maximum error margin of 14%. Finally, an illustration of calibrated-UBEM design case scenarios is presented, and implications on community energy potential effects are discussed.

It is becoming more and more important to create a comfortable thermal environment in cities. In order to increase consideration of the thermal environment in the planning and design process, this study proposed a method to combine rule-based rapid modelling with thermal environment simulation. This method can realize the flexible and visualized presentation of landscape and the thermal environment effect. Meanwhile economic cost of design elements was also taken into consideration. The proposed method can support the designers to evaluate the trade-offs among landscape, thermal environment and cost and then choose a better scheme. A historic district in China was taken as a case study object in this paper. Three optimization plans were made by changing building height, greening space and area of water-permeable pavements. Through visual analysis of 3D landscape models and thermal simulations, it was found that the green space and water-permeable pavements had an obvious effect on the improvement of the thermal environment, but control of building height had negative thermal improving effect. The proposed method also effectively improved public understanding of reconstruction design and thermal environment formation.

The records of the strategic documents for Lodz pay special attention to the need to undertake work in the historical parts of the city. One of the strategic objectives of the Municipal Revitalization Program for the city of Lodz 2026+ has become the "revival of the area of residence" through the transformation of residential objects with the environment related to them functionally, i.e. public and semi-public spaces.

One of the ways to improve the urban tissue standard is to ensure the correct microclimatic conditions prevailing in the areas of public spaces. In the paper, the microclimatic parameters and thermal comfort in the area of one of the oldest public spaces in Lodz - the Old Marketplace were estimated by the usage of the CFD program. Two types of input data have been applied, i. e. from direct field measurements and meteorological station database. It turned out that simulations based on data from direct field measurements were characterized by greater precision of obtained results. Existing thermal conditions were discomfortable, which results in the necessity of redesigning public space.

This study aims to clarify the trend of adapting clothing fitting to the thermal environment in offices located in Thailand by analyzing thermal sensation, thermal comfort, and thermal preference. Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) measuring devices were installed to investigate the thermal environment of two offices in Bangkok, Thailand. Questionnaires following ASHRAE 55 standard were distributed to occupants during their work hours. The results obtained showed that when plotted on a psychrometric chart, the thermal environment was mostly outside the 0.5 clo comfort zone (39% and 64%). The average clothing insulation in case studies was 0.65 clo, which is slightly higher than the normal standard value. The percentage of neutral thermal sensation votes decreased when the value of clothes gradually increased similar trend as to the percentage of neutral comfort votes. PMV calculation deviated from thermal sensation vote about 1 °C when considering thermal neutrality. Probit analysis shows that the neutral temperature of each clothing rate ranged from 24.2°C to 25.6°C. Occupants in less clothing could tolerate a wider range of temperatures than the occupants in more clothing. This study would be applicable to office buildings in the tropical region in terms of both the occupant’s behavioral aspects and temperature setpoint.

The objective of this study is to investigate the urban wind power potential from the proper arrangement of high-rise buildings in a complex and dense urban environment. There is great prospective in the formulation of the building design at early stages to maximize wind power production in dense urban areas. We employed the 3D steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to investigate the impact of the arrangement of high-rise buildings on the wind energy potential . Two arrays of high-rise buildings with height = 90 m and aspect ratio (height/width) of 4.5 is studied, which focuses on different distances between the side façades of the upstream buildings, ranging from 3 to 21 m. The findings of the study support the high-rise buildings design with respect to integrated urban wind energy harvesting and the concept of sustainable urban development.

As one part of a three years project, this study was the test of a research procedure that will be applied to older occupants in care homes in the future research. It aims to investigate the feasibility of using Transepidermal Water Loss (TEWL) to measure the effect of dry air on occupant’s skin condition and hygrothermal comfort in a real living environment. 9 young adults participated in the 4-week study. Domestic humidifiers were used in each room to alter room humidity under a sequence of interventions. Data was collected under the circumstance of no interferences to occupants’ daily life. The collected data includes room temperature, relative humidity (RH) and TEWL on front arm. Results show that the measured TEWL was not significantly correlated to room RH due to inappropriate research procedure. Room humidity was effectively altered to 40% RH through the domestic humidifier used.

This study aimed to quantify the embodied energy of economic and socialized housing units in Davao City, Philippines and listed down the construction materials that contributed significantly to the total embodied energy and at the same time correlated these materials to the embodied energy. Embodied energy coefficients of construction materials were sourced out from existing literatures since there were no available standards and studies conducted or published in the context of the Philippines. A bill of materials/quantities was prepared for each housing unit in order to compute the embodied energy. The research findings showed that an average of 9,477.74 MJ/m2 of embodied energy was computed among the housing units. The results also showed that building materials such as cement, reinforcing bars (steel), gravel, and sand, have significant positive correlation with the embodied energy alongside the house unit floor area. The result further showed that the embodied energy measured per square meter (MJ/m2) was higher compared to the existing and published studies conducted. Implications to housing delivery were also pointed out for policy-making which could be adopted by the housing authority.

This paper aims to reveal the detailed household energy consumption patterns in four major cities of Indonesia and Malaysia. A total of 1,437 households of landed houses and apartments were surveyed during 2010-2014. The detailed household appliances and gas consumption were investigated through face-to-face interviews and measurement. The results showed that overall, annual average energy consumption in landed houses (15-28 GJ) is about 1.3-2.3 times larger than those in apartments (12-14 GJ). The energy consumption for cooking accounts for the largest proportion in all the case studies, ranging from 29% to 66% of the total. The energy consumption for cooling include those for AC and fans and they account for 21% to 22% on average in Jakarta and Johor Bahru respectively. The profiles of CO2 emissions were similar with those of energy. The factors affecting household energy consumption for cooling energy are also discussed.

The favela is a pressing reality in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, concentrating around 10% of its population. Despite the public investments and its higher consolidation status, the favela still lacks some urban infrastructures and services. In addition to that, housing is a key topic both due to the social dynamics embedded and to the poor environmental conditions found indoors, mainly caused by overexposure, under performative building fabric and inefficient openings. From this context, how would it be possible to develop practical and replicable design strategies for the self-built houses’ facades, environmentally informed in favelas in Subtropical Climates? The method articulates fieldwork, analytical simulations and prospective exercises that culminate on the construction of a 1:1 prototype entitled “Everyday House”, in the second largest favela in the city of Sao Paulo, “Favela de Paraisópolis”, with the aim of evaluating the strategies’ impact and promoting its replication within and outside of the local community.

This study challenges the misperception that natural ventilation cannot be used as a passive cooling means in Mexico City due to the air pollution and demonstrates that free running conditions can indeed be achieved by passive design strategies. These were tested in a refurbishment project of a brutalist office building in the city, where the high thermal mass of the building was exposed, while natural and night ventilation as well as exterior solar control were implemented as the most relevant passive strategies. As thermal comfort and ventilation was achieved by passive means, electric energy used for this purpose was reduced up to 98% dispensing the need for an HVAC system; in addition, after enhancing daylight, installing LED lighting, and substituting inefficient appliances the total electric energy consumption dropped up to 46%, from 114KWh/m2 to 61KWh/m2. Finally, the relationship between indoor air quality, human comfort, and passive strategies was investigated, correlating the outdoor air quality with the climate. The study revealed that it’s possible to integrate natural ventilation strategies without compromising the interior air quality if the diurnal Ozone trend is followed and enabled between 8pm and 11am when the air quality tends to be classified as “Good”.

Under this study, office buildings spread across Mumbai were chosen for Post Occupancy Evaluation of indoor environment quality. Parameters evaluated were - Temperature, Humidity, PM2.5, VOC, CO2 and illumination. While rest of the parameters were found to be compliant to ISHRAE 10001:2016.- the two most important office indoor environment quality problems in Mumbai were PM2.5 and CO2 levels -Both these parameters were found to be in excess of the benchmarks specified in standards. Indoor CO2 concentration often exceeded 1000 ppm during working hours, indicating inadequate supply of fresh air. PM 2.5 levels were 2-3 times of the benchmark value of 0.1-25 μg/m³.

Cluster Redevelopment is a new concept in the city of Mumbai. Its regulations were laid down by the government in 2009. The concept of cluster redevelopment encompasses a group of buildings defined by a boundary as specified by the municipal authority (in this case, Mumbai), which may be dilapidated or approved for redevelopment. The study analyses the effect of cluster redevelopment in the form of renewal of old group of buildings as compared to refurbishment or restoration - on energy consumption. The methodology includes methods of assessment to determine increase or decrease in energy consumption in cluster redevelopment based on different criteria such as carpet area of the units, building envelope and its architectural elements. Results show that as the area and number of units increase the Energy consumption increases and the EPI (energy performance index) decreases as compared to the base case. The energy consumption per unit area declines by 29% in the proposed cluster redevelopment as compared to the original settlement. It is recommended that although new development is spacious and provides more light and ventilation, aspects such as glass type, traditional architectural features and consumer behaviour are critical in the reduction of energy consumption

To explore a comprehension of daylight knowledge and its impact on visual perception, two surveys have been carried out in 2016-2018 among architecture students (so far 500 responders involved). This paper presents findings from the second survey which was conducted in six European countries. Based on the earlier outcomes obtained from the first questionnaire, the revised survey’s goal was to analyse in more detail a link between a perception of daylit spaces perceived by the students and by the experts. The ultimate goal was to verify daylight knowledge’s impact upon the visual perception.

As a result of such large investigation, three clear trend lines can be distinguished: i) the mood seems to be related to the perceived comfort rather than the sun/sky condition; ii) the judgments expressed by the experts and the non-experts are congruent (confirming the outcome of the earlier study); iii) the lack of knowledge about daylight metrics and regulations was noticeable as well as the difficulties with an implementation of daylight analysis outcomes into the design process. The outcomes highlight a necessity of introducing a comprehensive daylight education into the architectural programmes.

The building sector amounts to about 40% of the world’s total energy consumption. In tropical countries like India naturally ventilated or mixed mode ventilated buildings would contribute in the reduction of energy consumption used for cooling the buildings. It is necessary for the architecture schools to educate the students on understanding the principles of natural ventilation and applications of various strategies in the design decisions. This paper summarizes the development of a water table apparatus for testing architectural design for natural ventilation, validation of its results, and its utilization in the classroom as a design evaluation tool for architecture students. The water table was constructed, and its performance was validated and simple metrics for evaluating natural ventilation performance were developed at CEPT University. A refined water table was constructed later to be used for classroom instruction at the C.A.R.E School of Architecture. The workshop there provided hands-on experience to test various design parameters, qualitative and quantitative analysis in design projects. The paper demonstrates the ease with which students are able to visualize and understand the effectiveness of natural ventilation and make the necessary design modifications.

There are pressures to showcase adoption of green buildings in universities for several reasons, including, demonstrating leadership, aligning with sustainability vision of the university and “walking the talk”. New generation learning and teaching spaces are moving away from the model of didactic teaching and learning towards two-way

teaching and learning models. While university buildings are incorporating such new teaching and learning models into their buildings, there is little or no evidence that green teaching spaces are actually supporting student learning outcomes. In comparison, the literature is rich with post occupancy and thermal comfort studies undertaken in green

office spaces. This paper presents a case study of a green building in a Victorian university in Australia. The building was considered to be an example of Australian excellence and has received a number of awards. Using one classroom in the building, the researchers monitored the temperature, relative humidity, and CO2 levels in this classroom during

a two week peak period of a summer intensive program. The findings suggest that this particular classroom did not always provide comfortable conditions for teaching and learning. More research is required to draw definitive conclusions.

It has been argued that buildings have evolved and adapted well in their response to social and economic context but have increasingly become indifferent towards local climate, completely relying on energy-consuming add-on systems to provide for occupant comfort. It doesn’t help either that contemporary energy standards encourage a similar idea of first thermally isolating the occupied spaces from the environment and, only then, employing efficient active systems for space conditioning. This paper illustrates a course structure where students and faculty collectively explored and discovered the potential of an integrated configuration of envelope and energy systems that positively interacts with exterior environment and enhances indoor comfort conditions with minimal energy use. The focus of this paper is to present how a critical approach of understanding climatic design principles can be developed through reverse synthesis of exemplary built examples. With a focus on occupant comfort and energy use, the students explored the potential for environmental response to different climates using a deconstructed version of a known existing building as inspiration to reference new designs.

In this article, the WUDAPT methodology was applied to Metropolitan Regions (RM) in the state of São Paulo/Brazil. The objective was to identify the influence of the typologies of urban versus rural occupation for a region with predominantly agricultural characteristics. The state of São Paulo/Brazil has six Metropolitan Regions and the choice of these regions was due to their socioeconomic and technological importance and because there is a concentration of agroindustrial and urban areas. The scarcity of data on urban form/occupation and on the function of cities makes it difficult to understand the climatic conditions of occupied space. Analyses were carried out, based on mappings developed by supervised classification and by treatment of MODIS satellite images. These resulted in the LCZ - Local Climate Zone classification; the mapping of the annual average Land Surface Temperature and the Surface Heat Island, all for the year 2016. Significant differences in surface temperature were found in the RM of São Paulo and Ribeirão Preto, mainly due to the type of LCZ class, soil type, solar incidence and topographic differences. Thermal images can serve as indicators of anomalies present in the analyzed areas and, associated with the LCZ classification, can support the formulation of spatial planning guidelines.

Construction activities can lead to detrimental environmental effects and the industry is recognised as a high polluter. Adopting more sustainable construction practices should be the mission of all stakeholders. One way of decreasing negative environmental impacts is to enhance the lifecycle of building materials. The construction sector can considerably enhance its sustainability quotient by fostering more sustainable practices around the use of building materials. From another point of view, construction is responsible for a large amount of waste, since it utilizes energy and materials. The construction sector is by nature fragmented and diverse, so involves many different stakeholders with different abilities to influence outcomes. As there is much to be gained by a more effective and coordinated construction industry, this paper reports on an investigation into the roles different stakeholders can play in bringing about change. This paper addresses this complexity and tries to clarify roles and responsibilities of stakeholders.

This paper describes the study on method development (regression analysis model and genetic algorithm model) and shows the results of the preliminary tests. The proposed holistic building performance analysis allows analysing the transition of energy demand, and understanding the impact of energy efficiency improvement in the building sector driven by nZEB implementation. By applying Finnish statistic data as open data source, the feasibility and potential of analysis was studied. It is clarified that a room for improvement is remained, but both proposed methods have potentials to provide informative outputs for the future energy analysis.

The present context of climate change and concomitant water related design challenges necessitate architectural innovations to provide sustainable housing for rural low-income communities, particularly in developing countries that are vulnerable due to economic, political and socio-cultural factors. In the wake of the Tsunami in 2004, the Sri Lankan government faced the paradoxical situation of rebuilding communities devastated by the disaster and the potential to build environmentally resilient settlements. The Kirinda Tsunami Resettlement Project is one such example that served a minority community and attracted international awards for its innovative architectural designs. This paper analyses the Kirinda Project, as a part of a larger PhD research project which employs an archival and empirical research methodology to evaluate planning intentions and the reception of the housing projects in the context of economic liberalization in Sri Lanka. Thus, this paper considers the synergy between the existing cultural landscape and the new housing designs, with the aim to provide lessons for sustainable architectural design for smart and healthy housing within the 2-degree limit at the scale of the rural village.

As urban populations are to increase by 2.6 billion by 2050, and the built environment accounts for over half global CO2 emissions, new methods are being investigated to reduce building energy use. Integrating plants into our built environment could help reduce temperatures and improve air quality, and thus reduce the need for ventilation, heating and air conditioning. Hydroponics allow to grow a high density of plants with little maintenance, weight and water use. The aim of this paper is to ascertain the potential advantages and viability of integrating numerous hydroponic modules in an office building. It presents in a first part the implementation of 50 hydroponic modules in an office building in Cambridge. The second part discusses the qualitative and quantitative monitoring of the impact of plants on the office. Finally, a model of interactions between the plants and the building environment is presented, and initial results of running a plant module in building energy simulation software TRNSYS are shown. Creating the model alongside the implementation project allowed to gain further insights into the impacts on environmental conditions, building energy use, and occupants of integrating a large density of plants into a building.

In buildings, coupling photovoltaic (PV) systems with electric storage (ES) enables to increase the building’s energy autonomy. However, if ES does extend the self-consumption of onsite renewable, it also increases the life cycle environmental impact of the stored energy. As a result, there is a threshold where the GHG emission benefits of using an ES starts to compensate its own embedded and operational impact. In this study, a methodology to assess this neutral global warming potential target of an ES is proposed and extended to the primary energy and its non-renewable part. The methodology is tested on a case study consisting of a feasibility project of a building located in Switzerland. When the surplus renewable energy that cannot be used directly neither stored onsite is exportable to the grid, the operational benefits of the ES cannot balance its embedded impact anymore. The neutral targets are greatly affected by the characteristics of the grid mix providing electricity to the building. While the mitigation of GHG emissions in buildings by the use of an ES may be efficient in countries like Germany that has a carbon-intensive mix, it might be technologically impossible with a low-carbon electricity provision, like in France for instance.

The concern about the increasing consumption related to heating, ventilation and air-conditioning applications in the residential sector, and the subsequent increase of the greenhouse gases emissions, has led to the search for solutions that can mitigate these adverse effects. Thermal energy storage with phase change materials is presented as an attractive solution because it allows storing large amounts of energy in small volumes; this solution can be adapted to meet the cooling and heating needs of a building. In this work, we detail the design, manufacture, and experimental tests of a prototype for an air-PCM unit, consisting of a tube bundle geometry. These tests were carried out on a plus energy house located in the South of France, during the summertime of 2017. Thermal performance was evaluated through indicators such as the indoor air temperature and the operating time of the unit. The results suggest that the air-PCM unit limits the indoor temperature rise during the unit operating time, keeping a temperature value around the upper thermal comfort limit.

An office building offers several opportunities to integrate Building integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) elements. Shading blinds form combines perfectly two functions: preventing part of the irradiation from reaching a glazed surface controlling the inner comfort conditions, as well as producing solar electricity. In regions where high irradiation is available and less demanding climates from the point of view of heating loads, this application is particularly advantageous for this kind of building. Nevertheless, at low latitudes locations, due to relative position of sun rays, the increasing effect of self-shading must be carefully analyzed - there is a delicate balance between optimal tilt angle and latitude to achieve a surface suited to integrate BIPV shadowing components. A methodology and practical results have been presented, easily possible to be used to design such devices in office buildings in Brazil, and, to a certain extent, in other countries at similar latitudes. Also, contribute to the further development of knowledge in this so far unexplored producing and saving energy saving strategy.

In the design practice simulation methods are already widely used to support the understanding of energy performance and to help designers in reducing energy demand during the design process. However, energy simulation tools are largely limited to the individual building level, and urban microclimate conditions and variations in local wind, solar radiation, and air temperature patterns in which buildings express their energy performance are largely overlooked. In order to include microclimatic data in the computation of space cooling and heating consumption and enlarge the scale of analysis from single buildings to district scale, a new simulation method has been developed. The proposed coupling procedure links the microclimate software ENVI-met and the City Energy Analyst energy simulation tool and it is employed in the energy assessment of a urban re-development project in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. The results show that, considering microclimatic boundary conditions, the average hourly energy loads vary for daytime and night-time peaks and moreover a variation can be noticed in terms of total space heating and cooling consumption on the hottest and coldest day of a typical year.

This paper focuses on the trends of 24/7 occupied IT offices in the Northern part of India. The rise of the IT Industry in India has resulted in an adaptation of the office spaces to the international trends of constructing glass box with deep plans and high glazing ratios coupled with aluminium composite panels with less considerations to the environmental and occupant needs. Such buildings are invariably dependant on air conditioning which results in huge energy expenditure. Fieldwork and Survey conducted for analysis illustrate the trends of the building typology which can be used as a basis for potential design solutions for IT offices being constructed in Delhi NCR by understanding the factors affecting the high energy demands and the spatial relationships.

This paper presents findings about interactions of occupants’ thermal feelings and adaptive actions within office buildings from a two-week longitudinal survey in Harbin, a north-east city in China with hot summers and severely cold winters. Measurements of the indoor and outdoor environmental changes and occupants’ window opening behaviours were conducted in six mixed-mode office rooms with fans or air conditioning cooling facilities. Thermal feelings and personal characteristics were gained via a panel questionnaire with 67 subjects from these offices to relate the thermal feeling with adaptions and physical conditions. The results showed the common use of the cooling device simultaneously with window opening behaviour, and an extremely high probability of window opening in office rooms with fans during the summer. Common patterns of the predictors for summer period in the severe cold area are identified in the analysis, while only gender for offices with fans and outdoor temperature, indoor and outdoor relative humidity for offices with air-conditioning were important variables in determining the state of the window opening. By comparing of the window opening changes with environmental factors for different thermal feelings, the mechanism of the interaction of occupant and offices building in summer season was further clarified.

This research aims to advance performance of the single stage passive downdraft evaporative cooling tower (PDECT) and expand its applicability beyond the hot dry conditions where it is typically used by developing and testing a design of a multi-stage passive and hybrid downdraft cooling tower (PHDCT). Experimental evaluation on half-scale prototypes of these towers was conducted in Tempe, Arizona, during Summer, 2017. Cooling systems in both towers were operated simultaneously to evaluate performance under identical conditions. Results indicated that the hybrid tower provides significant advantages over the single stage tower as the former outperformed the latter under all ambient conditions.

With the aim of reducing carbon emissions and increasing hygrothermal comfort, buildings across the UK are undergoing energy retrofits. With historic buildings, it is important that retrofit actions have a limited negative impact on the building’s fabric and cultural significance. Work to date in the UK has focused on the retrofit of historic solid masonry construction, with little research into the retrofit of historic timber-framed buildings. Changes to these buildings must be managed through the use of established conservation principles. However, where infill panels are beyond repair or have previously been substituted with inappropriate materials, there exists the potential to retrofit a material with a higher thermal performance. Nonetheless, it must be ensured that this retrofit does not create interstitial hygrothermal conditions that could threaten the survival of surrounding historic fabric. In this paper the authors present the hygrothermal simulation and physical monitoring of three different potential replacement infill panels. Results from Glaser calculations, WUFI® Pro and WUFI® 2D are compared to measured results of physical test panels mounted between two climate-controlled chambers. Whilst all three prediction methods successfully identified interstitial condensation where it was measured to occur, major discrepancies existed both between simulated and measured results, and between different simulation methods.

New methods for designing with phase change materials (PCM) could widen the range of applications of passive systems for indoor cooling in architecture. This paper investigates material and formal strategies for generative architectural design that support the thermal performance of PCM. Dendritic geometry of PCM encapsulation with a large surface area per unit volume is proposed for enhancement of the heat transfer between PCM and surroundings. The prototype of the PCM ceiling component is digitally designed, manufactured in glass and tested in an experimental set-up for thermal cycling. Correlations are made between geometric configurations and cooling performance of dendritic and spherical PCM containments. The presented methodology integrates tools and techniques from digital design and energy technology, with an aim to contribute to novel PCM-based concepts for local thermal regulation in architecture.

The new WUDAPT portal tool 'WUDAPT2ENVI-met' supplies a fast and easy way to generate large urban areas for ENVI-met simulations in a worldwide consistent manner. WUDAPT’s Local Climate Zone Classifications provide spatial information based on satellite imagery, which is translated into large ENVI-met model areas by templates of ENVI-met objects called Standard LCZ tiles. While 17 Local Climate Zone classes seem to be sufficient to describe the inhomogeneity of urban morphologies within one urban area, the inhomogeneity of urban morphologies across different urban areas worldwide might call for more, site-specific morphology classes. Based on this requirement WUDAPT2ENVI-met was enhanced allowing the import of user-generated, site-specific LCZ tiles for the translation. In order to examine whether the Standard LCZ tiles are versatile enough to dissect urban areas worldwide, a classification using the Standard LCZ tiles and specific, user-generated morphologies is compared in a case study of Sao Paulo. Furthermore, the results are compared against a simulation of the same area consisting of the actual building morphology. The comparison showed that the use of site-specific morphologies, materials and plants improved the results, better fitting the results of the actual morphology simulation, which states an important enhancement of the tool.

Facing the challenges of global warming, daylighting design optimisation for energy saving and visual comfort has become increasingly important. Across the centuries, architecture precedents have showcased daylighting as one of the key defining elements of spatial quality. While light does not exist in any physical forms, it possesses the superiority to reveal, create and enhance the atmosphere of a physical space, which in-turn impacts the perception and experience of users. How then do we meaningfully make use of this profound natural source to reach our goal in energy savings and visual comfort? This paper investigates different daylighting design strategies in sacred environments, aiming to understand how daylighting strategies using dynamic brightness balance and contrast were applied in two unique sacred structures for enhanced visual perception and energy saving. The research methodology included qualitative field studies by subjective recording of the lit scenes through photographs and hand drawn sketches to assess the visual and biological appreciation of the spaces; and quantitative surveys of brightness contrast in selected visual fields by luminance and illuminance distribution mapping. The research outcomes reveal how visual perception and comfort in sacred environments can be enhanced by appropriate use of daylight, leading to substantial long-term energy saving.

This paper deals with the effect of intra-climate diversity of composite climatic zone of India on the thermal performance of the naturally ventilated public housing buildings. This study is an attempt to improve the accuracy of the existing prescriptive benchmarks. The study has two objectives (a) to analyse the thermal severity variation within the composite climate of India and develop a tiered stratification of locations (b) analyse the impact of the thermal severity variation on the performance of representative public housing projects. The scope of study is limited to naturally ventilated residential typology. Data for 162 locations were obtained from Indian Meteorological department (IMD) and statistically analysed in order to classify them based on thermal severities. A review of housing designs of low income group housing being implemented by governmental agencies was reviewed and three representative designs are selected. A short-term thermal performance monitoring is conducted in these residences. The data is used to compare the thermal performance variations as well as to face validate the virtual models developed in Energy Plus software tool. The buildings are simulated for their performance at locations with high, moderate and low thermal severities within composite climate zone. A comparative analysis is carried out with that of NBC prescribed thermal performance guidelines. A set of scaling factors are determined after performing local thermal optimizations at representative locations. The factors are validated with location specific simulations performed for other locations.

The comfort and health of building occupants are significantly affected by the indoor thermal environment, which can be improved by building envelopes with a good façade design. This study aims to explore the impact of façade shading on the indoor thermal comfort by adding external shading panels on a typical public rental housing building in Hong Kong. Potential improvements on thermal comfort, in terms of indoor operative temperatures (Top), were evaluated for vertical and horizontal shading panels that were tilted at different angles to the façade. Simulation results on DesignBuilder reveal that horizontal shading panels (with a Top reduction up to 0.91˚C) can achieve a better thermal performance than those oriented vertically (with a maximum Top reduction of 0.57˚C). Moreover, shading panels tilted at 90˚ to 45˚ for horizontal panels and at 75˚ to 0˚ for vertical panels were preferred for better thermal performances. This strategy can be readily implemented to procure more sustainable public housing without causing obstructions to the window view of occupants.

Most studies on indoor environments and productivity have been conducted in controlled, static conditions often not representative of the real world. This paper uses a case study-based, real-world approach to empirically investigate the relationship between the indoor environment and workplace productivity in a mechanically-ventilated office environment in southern England. Evidence gathered during a baseline period is used to implement an intervention (limiting peak temperature) with the aim of improving productivity. Environmental parameters (temperature, relative humidity and CO₂) were monitored continuously. Transverse and longitudinal surveys recorded occupant perceptions of their working environments, thermal comfort and self-reported productivity, while performance tasks objectively measured productivity. Although the building was operating within narrow temperature, RH and CO₂ bands, productivity was perceived to decrease when occupants were thermally uncomfortable and when they perceived the air as stuffy. Correlations with perceived changes in productivity were stronger for the perceived environment than for the measured environmental conditions. In addition, test scores were found to decrease at higher temperatures. Median scores were 16% lower for tests conducted when CO₂ levels were in the 1000-1200ppm range compared to those conducted below 800ppm. Insights from the study can be used to optimise indoor office environments to improve staff productivity.

The US Green Buildings Council (USGBC) has created a market transformation program led by a certification process to promote, build, and renovate buildings into LEED™ rated green facilities. One of the goals of the LEED rating system is to reduce carbon and energy expenditure in buildings while improving occupant’s health and wellbeing. Due to a lack of systemic evaluation of buildings undergoing this certification process, however, the effects of this program on building resource utilization, indoor comfort, and occupant’s well-being remain contested. This paper reports on a cross-sectional survey study that investigates discrepancies between LEED certified buildings credits achieved as well as predicted and actual performance. The survey assessed 14 buildings, matched in pairs of two, of LEED and non-LEED buildings. Resource consumption and indoor environmental quality were assessed between both building pairs and their relationship to the LEED certification credits achieved. Results show that while LEED buildings outperformed their non-LEED comparatives, their resource consumption, however, exceeded their predicted expectations in most categories. In addition, the amount of credits achieved were not directly related to better performance. The paper concludes with a framework to integrate occupant feedback and building performance into the way we design, deliver, and operate buildings.

There is an urgent need for construction systems that enable the recovery of materials at the end of a building’s life. The current widespread use of adhesive-based fixings and single-life materials formed from petrochemical derivatives has led to the unprecedented generation of toxic material waste. Consequently, up to 40% of global waste is estimated to come from the construction sector. This design-led research study examines the potential of new light timber frame designs to facilitate material recovery. The research focuses the geometric and jointing properties of the components within the light timber frame and their potential for reuse. To validate the success of the proposed design ideas, a lifecycle assessment of the product was undertaken. This has been supported by a detailed discussion of the durability performance of the system. The study finds that the geometric and assembly conditions of the frame significantly increase long-term sustainable measures. The proposed design is estimated to represent a 70% reduction in embodied energy over an extended product’s lifetime versus conventional light timber platform framing.

The multiple criterion scale developed by Hopkinson is extensively utilised to analyse the subjective degree of discomfort due to glare. Using a luminance adjustment procedure, the brightness of a glare source is adjusted to reveal four levels of discomfort, typically: just imperceptible, just acceptable, just uncomfortable, and just intolerable. In many experimental studies, observers are requested to attend to each level of discomfort in ascending order, from the lowest to the highest criterion. There are, however, reasons to believe that assessments made using adjustments might be affected by the initial anchor, i.e. the setting of the variable stimulus before an adjustment is made, and by order effects, this influencing the reported thresholds of discomfort. To investigate anchor bias and order effects, two Hopkinson-like multiple criterion adjustment experiments were performed, respectively with three different initial anchors and three order sequences (ascending, descending, and randomised). The results revealed substantive bias due to anchor and order effects, primarily at lower glare criteria. This demonstrates the need for caution when interpreting subjective evaluations of discomfort due to glare and estimating the robustness of glare indices derived from studies that used models fitted to data obtained with Hopkinson’s multiple criterion scale and luminance adjustment procedure.

Occupant exposure to unhealthy Particulate Matter (PM) in naturally ventilated air-tight dwellings is not fully understood. In the UK, past studies have not investigated PM in bedrooms. Yet, PM is considered the most toxic pollutant and affects more people than any other pollutant; and bedrooms are the spaces that people typically occupy for the longest cumulative periods of their lifetime; with little or no control of ventilation during sleep. This paper evaluates monitored PM10 and PM2.5 in the context of occupant health in bedrooms of eleven dwellings across Scotland. It focuses on PM2.5, the size associated with greatest impact on health. PM and window operation were monitored concurrently. Air-tightness, smoke tests, dwelling inspections, occupant surveys, questionnaires, and interviews were also conducted. The results indicate that PM2.5 concentrations were generally above the recommended limits by WHO; and potentially unsafe in all the dwellings in the context of the EU-ESCAPE study. Bedtime mean concentrations were significantly lower than the 24hr mean, but would also have potentially negative health impacts based on the ESCAPE study. This suggests possible health burdens of particulates in bedrooms, with continuing construction of air-tight dwellings. Further work is needed on a larger sample of dwellings across different seasons.

Construction of low-cost housing in Colombia is one of the greatest social challenges of the country. Due to Bogotá's climate conditions at 8500 ft. of altitude and non-adapted materials to local conditions, the temperature of these state-subsidized dwellings is usually below optimum comfort standards. This research analyzes the effect of the use of certain types of materials on temperatures, comparing the effect of some traditional building skin– composed by brick and concrete - with a new wall envelope made of recycled elements. A comparative study was carried out by housing typologies, based on a work of measurement of the temperatures inside 16 individual dwellings.

The simulations in design builder to compare the traditional brick envelope material vs a compacted plastic brick, the results suggests that the construction of dwellings with traditional materials such as brick blocks and prefabricated concrete blocks may not provide the best conditions of thermal comfort. Alternative materials made of recycled plastic can represent a cheaper, ecological and comfortable solution. Findings could be of interest to construction stakeholders for the low-cost housing construction in resilient cities, within the framework of a new plastics economy.

Key words: Social housing, thermal comfort, envelope, architecture, recycled materials, energy efficiency.

In times of global ecological challenges, understanding building performance to improve occupants’ comfort is becoming the norm in various climatic zones and locales. Any performance evaluation should account for occupants’ demands for thermal and visual comfort. However, seeking to analyse the impact of design on the two aspects of comfort simultaneously can be complicated especially when a series of parametric changes with varying impacts on either is necessary. In the Nigerian context, assessing the environmental behaviour of existing residential properties to inform future refinement is becoming far more critical due to the vulnerability of the region to the changing climate, the ongoing issue with the energy supply and the housing shortage. The method adapted in this paper following previous research can be useful for the coinciding evaluation of the thermal environment and visual comfort. The environmental behaviour of two of Abuja’s common housing types, in their current state and with the addition of multiple shading elements assessed using such methodological procedures to examine their suitability for performing a comprehensive analysis. The paper discusses the simplicity of the graphical representation utilised in displaying the changes in the cases’ behaviour following the alteration. It also provides an insight into their current performance.

Looking back to the glory years of Brazilian bioclimatic modernism between 1930 and 1964, the country´s architectural heritage reveals a design approach still highly relevant today. Building design of those days paid heed to solar orientation and the consequent need for solar protection. The COPAN is the tallest residential buildings in South America until today, with 42 floors being 38 residential and 120 thousand square meters of total built space. The long “S” shape form creates variations in the orientation, resulting in one side of the building facing north and northwest whilst the other faces south and southeast. This research work about the thermal performance of the Copan building was developed based on fieldwork including measurements in loco of environmental variables and interviews with occupants. The effect of thermal inertia coupled with external shading, that characterizes buildings built during the times of the Brazilian bioclimatic modernist, resulting in steady thermal conditions during warm and cold days, favorable to the comfort of the occupants, with temperature figures oscillating between 24oC and 26oC.

London’s increasing housing demands and land scarcity impose a creative way of finding spaces for well-connected, sustainable housing development. Airspaces, above low-traffic connector roads, in between blind walls (windowless) of terraced houses were found numerous and identified as exploitable spaces. This paper illustrates a framework design that aims to have a contextually sensitive application that provides quality atmospheres for a modern live-work lifestyle, with flexible spatial layouts and adaptive passive features to help achieve desirable comfort. The project employs a modular construction system, for efficient and affordable delivery, where design strategies are transferable and adaptable on sites with different dimensions and microclimates. The outcome is an optimized prototype that demands 30% less energy per sqm annually compared to the UK Zero Carbon Dwelling standard.

This study aims to explore the comparative effects between Obstacle’s Distance and Obstacle’s Orientation parameters that cause partial shading effect (PSE) and influence the potential solar power generation of a building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system. An automatic collaboration between Building Information Modelling (BIM) software and a cloud-based building performance analysis tool were used to simulate the annual cumulative insolation obtained from rooftop BIPV surfaces of sixteen different Obstacle’s Orientations and forty-three different distances between the BIPV and building obstacles—Obstacle’s Distance. The case study are two axis-aligned public healthcare buildings; an outpatient department (OPD) building and a ward building that are widely established throughout Thailand. This study also explores the notion that Obstacle’s Orientation and Obstacle’s Distance of a surrounding obstacle are both important parameters that influence the annual cumulative insolation of PV surfaces but in the different contexts. The findings of this study also support decision making for BIPV designers and planners to select which the BIPV and the obstacle placement is highly effective, especially BIPV application on lower-rise buildings in dense urban environments, such as healthcare facilities.

This paper presents 4 rural housing typologies designed by Grupo Austral in 1939 for the countrymen of Argentina. Each dwelling was adapted to a different climatic region of the country, ranging from warm subtropical to cold desert. The designs represent an outstanding start in environmental awareness in Argentina, though ignored by the community of architects and any of the government plans for housing. In this paper the design features of these housing designs are evaluated using contemporary simulation tools and the original specifications are compared to current building practices. Comparison with contemporary housing projects by government agencies shows the Grupo Austral’s design to be superior in all environmental aspects.

Kisekae House is a net zero energy house, which the total energy consumption is covered by natural energy. The students and teachers of Architecture Major in Mukogawa Women’s University proposed the house. The high thermal performance of the house and the high efficient equipment keep the room condition comfortable, as well as reduction of the energy consumption. In addition, ideas based on the Japanese traditional system and devices are adopted. The residents can control the environment by adjusting spaces and device conditions by themselves. According to the results of the measurement of the energy consumption and thermal environment in November 2017, the total zero energy were achieved on the house.

In Medellin, as in most Colombian cities, self-construction and self-management were the main drivers of urban development in the periphery areas, through informal settlements. The generation of cableway systems has improved connectivity with the rest of the city, but in terms of housing, there are still many sectors with poor residential habitat, in terms of habitability, well-being, and eco-efficiency. This research focuses on making a diagnosis of the area near the Metrocable Line H, seeking to establish the necessary factors to improve the livability of people in the sector, having as base the experiences of the two previous cableway in the city, evaluating the processes of consolidation and adaptation that are generated, the way in which these impulse interventions by the State. The results conclude that although there is a positive connection between the neighborhood and the city, reducing marginality, it is necessary to connect it inside, and although there is a first approach to improving the public space, it doesn’t work as expected, resulting in an incentive for informal development.

The driver behind the need for sustainable development is to mitigate the impact that predicted climate change will have on our cities, land uses and infrastructural systems. This paper explores new spatial forms of sustainable housing in Scotland where the demand for new housing in accessible rural areas is predicted to increase due to pressure from nearby urban centres. Historically, rural building forms were largely influenced by immediately available materials, climate and specific use, resulting in regionally identifiable typologies. However, changes in the way we live, proximity to place of work, and the relationship between home, community and land-use have resulted in rural domestic buildings losing specific regional distinctions. The primary house type on offer through the volume house building market is homogenised materially, structurally and spatially, lacking any relationship to place. The aim of this research was to generate new spatial models of autarkic housing and alternative massing arrangements that responded to land-use, density, energy, landscape and Scottish policy frameworks. The main objective in the study was to generate alternative, semi-quantifiable models that integrated the above requirements within holistic conceptual frameworks for rural sustainable living and which could then be used as a primer for further research and development.

Urban air pollution is currently one of the top worst pollution problems in China. It can not only worsen indoor air quality but also substantially reduce daylight availabilities in buildings, both of which are directly linked to occupants’ health and well-being. This article presents results of a winter experiment focusing on testing human performances in a daylit office room with three various glazing systems in Beijing. The impact of external air pollution on occupants’ visual comfort, alertness and mood is the research focus. Some findings can be achieved as 1) Urban air pollution can significantly reduce the indoor daylighting availability; 2) Urban air pollution would significantly affect occupants’ performances. 3) The impact varies with the applications of different window glazing systems. A proper selected glazing system could mitigate the negative impact of urban air pollution on human performances.

Material considerations are essential while trying to achieve low energy and carbon constructions. According to our preliminary findings, decisions regarding materials in new buildings are mostly done by clients or by self-builders often without the aid of an architect or planner. Therefore, community studies are important to understand today’s building dynamics. In this exploratory study - carried out in USA and Mexico - we analysed the public’s preferences for building materials for the exterior of dwellings and the factors that have more influence over their decisions while choosing the materials. We also studied the update in the subjects’ preference after receiving certain information concerning the materials. We wanted to know if the environmental factors play an important role in today's public preference in the building sector and what type of information could greater affect their beliefs. Preliminary results for Mexico and after a follow up analysis for USA show that acknowledging unfamiliar information (e.g. carbon emissions or price) might have a greater influence on the public’s update of preference of materials. This could have implications for the construction market dynamics in the usage promotion of low carbon building materials.

Many offices have been renovated to improve building performance. However, the user’s perception after renovation has not been evaluated. This paper presents user satisfaction with indoor environmental quality in façade renovated offices in the Netherlands. The study explored the correlation between facade renovation strategies and indoor climate on the one hand and on the other hand user satisfaction and user preferences. Data were collected in four renovated offices in the Netherlands, which were adapted using different façade renovation strategies. The case study consisted of conducting online surveys and indoor climate monitoring for 2 weeks with loggers. Statistical results demonstrate that design factors such as desk location, workplace orientation, and layout have a strong correlation with user satisfaction of IEQ, unlike window types. The suggested essential design factors for user satisfaction can guide architects and designers to better understand users’ preferences and to reflect on office design.

The understanding of households’ socio-economic characteristics and their behaviour has been acknowledged as a key factor while assessing the energy demands. There is considerable research in the area of building simulation and energy modelling; However, the representation of occupants and their behaviour needs further work. For instance, every degree rise in internal temperature settings will increase the household energy consumption by 10 %. This research investigates the energy use behaviour of a specific demographic and ethnic group, the British Asian households. A large-scale housing survey is used to gather self-reported information about the British Asian households’ energy use behaviour, for instance, heating patterns, appliances use, ventilation behaviour, as well as other socio-economic characteristics. Data collected will be transformed into energy models, which includes Space heating behaviour models, electrical appliances and lighting use models, and Ventilation behaviour models. The outcome of this research demonstrates how social perception and economic aspirations limit the acceptability of sustainable design and construction strategies. This research involves active community participation and engagement; a major part of the dissemination will aim at communicating the research findings to the British Asian households, which will have a direct impact of energy reduction by informed behaviour choice.

The opening form of building façade has a strong influence on people’s perceptions of interior spatial properties. However, architectural designers usually pay attention to aesthetics aspect of building façade and neglect the influence of changing the opening form on the people’s perceptions of interior space. Furthermore, the isovist is a quantitative method that describes space from a visual observing perspective including 2D and 3D measures. But most isovist studies investigate the visual experience of interior space only in two dimensions. Besides, the opening can also influent the daylighting performance, and the daylighting performance can impact the interior perception as well. In response, this paper presents the results of a study involving 52 participants who assessed 29 perspective views of virtual interiors with different opening forms for feelings of spaciousness. Firstly, these results are compared with isovist measures, including 2D and3D, to examine which isovist measure is more effective. Secondly, these results are compared with daylighting measures to find out which openings can possess both spacious feeling and nice daylighting performance.

Radiant heating and cooling systems have the potential to save energy and are widely used in zero net energy buildings. Their positive and negative impacts on indoor environmental quality and, in particular, thermal comfort compared to all-air systems are still debated in the literature. This paper presents indoor environmental quality survey results from 3,892 respondents in 60 office buildings located in North America. 34 (2,247 respondents) of these buildings utilized all-air systems and 26 (1,645 respondents) utilized radiant systems as primary conditioning system. Our results indicate that radiant and all-air buildings have equal indoor environmental quality, including acoustic performance, with a tendency towards improved temperature satisfaction in radiant buildings.

The building footprint is likely to increase five-folds by 2030. These buildings consume a large chunk o energy in the form of electricity for running systems like air conditioning, artificial lighting, and equipment to name a few. The energy consumption in building sector can be decreased. This can be done by carrying out building performance evaluation studies, which will help in understanding the energy losses inside a building. This research focuses on developing an affordable monitoring and sensing system for building performance evaluation studies. Different hardware and software platforms are explored, and component selection was done after comparative analysis based on various aspects. The aspects considered for selection include: specifications, the ease of use, cost, and complexity of the system. The expected outcome is a methodology tailored for custom needs of the user, and a prototype for building performance evaluation studies.

The study addresses issues of the detection of built-up areas based on satellite images and prediction of changes in spatial planning using artificial neural networks. Using satellite images from the Landsat satellite, the authors have developed a built-up areas detection model using a combination of indexes such as NDBI, NDVI and MNDWI. The quality of classification was empirically verified on the basis of a set of randomly selected image points. Forecasts of changes in spatial planning were carried out with the use of two types of neural networks: MLP and RBF. For MLPs, the activation functions, such as logistic, hyperbolic tangent, Gaussian and sine, were tested. In total, more than 5.000 different models of artificial neural network have been built and verified. The simulations covered two areas diversified in terms of building density – fragments of the cities of Lodz and Zgierz located in central Poland in central Europe. Developed model provided changes in built-up areas between 1998 and 2006. In order to confirm the quality of model’s operation, the authors calculated percentage correctness of the area classification, which was 94.06% for the area with a higher degree of urbanization and 91.86% for the less urbanized area.

The semi-outdoor space is an important space in the hot-humid climate for preventing indoor environments from overheating and reducing building air-conditioning energy consumption. This paper presents a case study to find out the uncomfortable locations in a university building through field measurement, and proposes strategies for improving the thermal environment in the thermally uncomfortable locations. The improvement effect of the proposed strategies was analyzed using a microclimate simulation tool (ENVI-met) in terms of PMV and etc.

Laterite stone is an integral part of vernacular architecture in konkan belt of India. Procurement of these stones involve quarrying by small scale industries that have no further action plan in disposal of the scrap generated during the stone cutting. The paper looks at utilising the laterite quarry scrap to make blocks and exploring the opportunities the material holds in terms of its thermal properties, environmental factor, economic factor and structural factor. To establish the thermal properties of the scrap block in comparison to laterite stone and concrete block, a wall module of the respective material was built to determine a comparative decrement factor and time lag. The paper recommends the use of scrap, utilising locally available material, curbing the pollution generated and providing a cost-effective solution for the locals.

In 1930’s modern architects in Israel discussed the influence of local climate on the building design. The climatic adaptation of these buildings was based merely on the Architecture itself. Environmental aspects, such as natural ventilation and shading, were a significant part in the architectural discourse and practice. The solutions provided sometimes were based on research and sometimes on common sense. Despite the efforts, these solutions have been never properly evaluated to confirm if they are indeed performing as expected. Lack of strict testing has been due to the absence of methods and tools to carry out these tests, especially spatial tools. However, today we can assess the thermal performance of the building by using novel computer models, and presenting the results on the space itself through spatial maps. This study will focus on the climatic performance of residential buildings in the 1930’s, which were built in Tel-Aviv in the International style. It will examine these buildings in terms of their ability to achieve thermal comfort. It will also question the intentions of the architects and the effectiveness of their architectural solutions in order to maintain comfortable conditions in the buildings.

This paper discusses occupants’ comfort, summertime overheating and heat stress in multi-family Colonial Revival style timber-frame buildings in Hartford region of Connecticut, United States. The study considered thermal comfort survey of occupants using questionnaire and on-site measurements of parameters as the methodology. The Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) and the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) heat indices are also calculated using the variables measured during the survey. Across the buildings, the results show a mean temperature of 25.3°C, a mean RH of 61.2%, and an average dew-point of 17.2°C. The occupants feel warm as over 67% responses are on the warm part of the sensation scale while 74% prefer to be much cooler and 83% of the revealed the occupants are thermally satisfied with the thermal environment. The study reveals the occupants are prone to summertime overheating. Applying the WBGT and the UTCI mathematical models, the study recommends the WBGT of 21.7°C and the UTCI of 25.8°C as possible heat stress thresholds. Also, the study found out the basement areas provide the most comfortable thermal environment for the occupants. The results show a higher heat stress index is reported in this study than the existing research on heat stress in buildings.

This paper aims to discuss about the thermal performance during the winter season of the recent production of open plan micro-apartments in São Paulo. The field research was conducted during 20 days, in the cold weather period, and consisted in the measurement and analysis of five units that are representatives of this dwelling typology.

Using numerical analysis, I investigated the human body exergy balance under an unsteady-state thermal environment surrounding the human body in the course of individuals moving indoors after having been outside for a while in summer. The mechanisms of thermal physiological adaptation such as sweat secretion were clarified from the exergetic perspective to some extent. Human body exergy consumption rate in the conditions that indoor absolute humidity is equal to outdoor is smaller than that in the conditions in which indoor absolute humidity is lower than outdoors. It suggests that extracting indoor moisture by ventilation is preferred compared to the dehumidification.

In the case of regenerative processes, design can receive significant benefits from information that can be obtained by applying the life cycle assessment methodology. The LCA (life cycle assessment) approach can be implemented both for a single building material and for the whole building. An effective and efficient real application of this methodology requires the integration of LCA databases and analysis routines to the simulation tools (Building Energy Simulation, Building Information Modelling). The integration of LCA tool significantly impacts the design efficacy especially in reducing environmental impact of the construction industry. This paper reviews the integrated LCA tools in simulation software currently available for BIM platforms and will explore the possibilities given to restorative design informed by LCA analysis, through a test on two construction typologies for a case study.

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have evolved over the past decade as both advanced military technology and off-the-shelf consumer devices. There is a gradual shift towards public use of drones, which presents opportunities for effective remote procedures that can disrupt a variety of built environment disciplines. UAS equipment with remote sensing gear present an opportunity for analysis and inspection of existing building stocks, where architects, engineers, building energy auditors as well as owners can document building performance, visualize heat transfer using infrared imaging and create digital models using 3D photogrammetry. This paper presents a comprehensive review of various literature that addresses this topic, followed by the identification of a standard procedures for operating a UAS for energy audit missions. The presented framework is then tested on a university campus site based on the literature review to showcase: 1) pre-flight inspection procedure parameters and methodologies; 2) during-flight visually identified areas of thermal anomalies using a UAS equipped with Infrared (IR) cameras and; 3) 3D CAD modelling developed through data gathered using UAS. A discussion of the findings suggests refining procedure accuracy through further empirical experimentation, as well as study replication, as a step towards standardizing the automation of building envelope inspection.

This paper presents the global methodology proposed for studying the microclimatic comfort of Algiers Kasbah. Three complementary approaches are used: (1) objective evaluation, (2) subjective survey, and (3) numerical simulation. Moreover, four typologies characterizing the Algiers Kasbah, since the algero-ottoman period until today, are considered to characterize the urban ambiances. This research aims to define the qualities and defects of different urban forms in order to outline a new framework for the future developments. The final objective is to learn from the past to produce urban spaces that respect the challenges of the sustainable development.

Manipulation of solar radiation and ventilation are key in achieving comfort in the tropics, hence transitional spaces often find their use as passive cooling agents in ethnic Indian architecture. A chawl is an example of a building typology in which transitional spaces find themselves serving plural functions- social and comfort enabling. Unique to Mumbai, chawls can be classified as social housing of the colonial times, consisting of buildings with long corridors, flanked by one room tenements and an enclosed courtyard. This paper focuses on evaluating the performance of aforementioned transitional spaces, through the optimization of their respective design elements. The courtyard is analysed to parameterize the relationship between design features and creating a favourable micro-climate, while the corridor study is aimed at quantifying human comfort as a parameter in transitional space design. The paper culminates with a comparison of performance of the optimized spaces to an existing chawl, emphasizing the method as well as the potential in the inclusion of transitional elements in design.

In the tropical environment, air conditioning has become a popular yet high-energy-consuming solution for interior cooling in urban households. With the rising trends in global warming, continued increase in air-conditioners usage has been serious environmental concerns over the past decades, calling for the need to rethink of more sustainable resolutions. While heat is alleged to be the main reason that creates discomfort, humidity also furtively plays a significant role. Sweaty and sticky feeling caused by humid environment deceive people to feel hotter than it truly is. As a matter of fact, rather than the heat itself, the discomfort triggered by humid environment could be the actual root for the high demand of air-conditioners in the tropic. This paper discussed the undesirable effects of humidity on people’s sensation and health which subsequently leads to the introduction to awareness of benefits of humidity control. The paper results in suggestions of how architectural design could take parts in controlling indoor moisture level by proposing a sustainable, energy-efficient, free-running design solutions to help people stay drier and cooler indoor. The research features materiality research and design experimentation regarding key humidity management strategies.

As the most widely applied residential building type in China, the form of residential areas composed of multi-storey residential building are strictly restricted by the sunlight standard in the design code. However, sunlight can still be inadequate in open spaces and overshadowed buildings in a compacted layout. Using a theoretical model, this paper identified the problem of sunlight and seeks to improve the sunlight performance in the type multi-storey residential building through formal modification of the building. The results showed the efficiency of the modification, which represented both in the open space and overshadowed building.

The application of studies of environmental quality of buildings and public spaces into practice and the way the planning of cities will face the climate changing challenge depends strongly on political will and governmental capacity to create appropriate management tools. While countries as Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada adopted continuous updated performance-based Building Codes, Sao Paulo city laws have lost over the last century, almost all the prescriptive construction requirements, which influence the environmental quality of buildings, such as the orientation of facades and the minimum sun hours on the openings. In the Code in effect, parameters as the minimum size of windows or the need to provide openings facing the exterior of buildings, or even the adequate room dimensions according to use were excluded. This paper aims to be critical and to make an alert to Sao Paulo’s planners about the risk of building such a complex city not regarding the quality of constructions.

Although research in the field of urban climatology has greatly expanded in the last two decades, the impact of urban climate knowledge on the urban planning and design practice remains very low. This is particularly the case in developing countries such as China, which faces a series of environmental problems. The paper looks at the ways urban climatic evaluation and application are incorporated into the master urban plan. It introduces the newly developed China National Guide—‘Technical specification for climatic feasibility demonstration in urban master plan (QX/T 242-2014))’, which aims to assist practitioners and policymakers to respect the natural environment and climate, and to adopt the concept of eco-protection. They can then carry out the overall urban planning climate feasibility evaluation from a climate perspective, so the city’s development will follow a rational planning program based on scientific evidence that will lead towards the goals of urban liveability and sustainable development. It also provides suggestions on data collection, methodology, planning implementation and technology report preparation. In this paper, the Tongzhou wind corridor plan is selected as a case to demonstrate the adoption of this Guide in real planning and design scenarios.

: This paper aims to explore the role that critical engagement with precedent might play in the delivery of Architectural sustainable design excellence. It is argued here that there are currently two divergent core paradigms in the field of architectural design: one based upon a conceptually underpinned process of Conjecture and Analysis, termed here Architectural Design Excellence; while the second, termed Sustainable Performance Excellence, seeks its delivery through a process termed by Bamford, Analysis and Synthesis, of constituent problem fragments. The central role of precedent in architectural design processes is acknowledged in both contexts, and as such it is argued that critical engagement from a sustainable performance perspective with case studies that demonstrate architectural design excellence may provide an effective route for achieving their synthesis. Online coverage of the 21 Stirling Prize winners, 1996 – 2016 (as a proxy for Architectural Design Excellence) were evaluated using a framework for holistic sustainability and the results presented in summary here. It was found that sustainable performance was largely ignored in the available critique, despite some performing well within the narrow measure of energy performance as evidenced through DEC’s, thus limiting precedents’’ potential role within the delivery of a future synthesised sustainable design excellence paradigm.

This paper tackles the challenge of lowering the energy consumption of office towers in Dubai. The idea of “Sky Gardens” is used as an alternative design concept to base on it. These spaces are defined as transitional zones between indoor and outdoor environments, which provide a smooth transition between otherwise contrasting climatic conditions. The research explores the multiple possibilities of the Sky Gardens; not least as an incentive for users to spend more time away from mechanically conditioned spaces while providing a better climatic interface for the conventional offices. The concept can be traced back to the vernacular courtyards of the region, which were typically equipped with systems that ameliorated the harsh outdoor conditions. The idea is translated and sophisticated so that the Sky Gardens can be adapted during mild, warm and hot periods to improve the building’s performance by coupling and decoupling it with the outdoor environment.

This paper refers to a project research of an office building in a cold climate, which objective is to achieve optimized energy standards by applying integrated design strategies. A theoretical model is proposed, and the formulation begins with a morphological analysis. Subsequently, thermal, light and ventilation criteria are integrated; analysing the energy demand throughout the design process. The model is compared with a reference case. As a result, the optimized model achieves a significant reduction in energy demand, and better thermal / visual performance. It concluded that the application of the integrated design, with the support of assisted simulation tools, allows to optimize the energy performance of a building in the design stage

ABSTRACT: Carlo Scarpa is skillful in using components and materials to create, moderate and enhance the light required for exhibiting the sculptures. The aim of this research is to explore his daylighting strategies and try to understand the interplay of light and space in the sculpture gallery of the Castelvecchio. This study started with background research, on-site studies then followed by parametric analysis. Overall, the findings suggest that Scarpa has wisely used key light and side light in the problematic space, creating a fascinating lighting environment.

KEYWORDS: daylighting, exhibition design, modelling, spatial creation

It is widely acknowledged that buildings contribute a considerable proportion of global GHG emissions in both their construction and use, making them a key contributor to global climate change. This reality is still absent in architectural education in much of sub-Saharan Africa, where a business-as-usual approach still predominates. Contemplating the responsibility of architects, landscape architects, urban designers and urban planners have in curbing GHG emissions, this paper reflects on how architectural education could respond to the challenges posed, placing architecture students and educators front-and-centre in this challenge, through their actions and outputs. The paper presents on-going dialogue surrounding the need to address climate change as an integral part of architectural discourse, looking at the attendant opportunities and challenges that arise from this process, and what we can learn from this discourse.

This paper presents preliminary research outcomes from applying EEG Mind Wave Mapping methodology for investigating the impacts of learning environment on students' concentration and learning performance under different lighting conditions. During the learning process, whether students remain attentive generally influences their learning efficacy. Literature shows that classroom lighting may be important for pupils' academic performance. However, most of the time, lighting could not be adequately controlled due to the given building envelope design and the spatial layout. The present study explores the influence of different lighting conditions in a conditioned room on architectural students' mind wave when they were engaging in a learning task. Lighting scenarios included naturally lit, artificially lit and hybrid mode set in this room were experimented and the test scores of the learning tasks under these scenarios were compared against mind wave mapping results . The preliminary findings from this study showed that students’ performance in a natural daylit and hybrid lit room shows higher concentration than that in the artificially lit room, as a result, the use of natural light in the learning environment is more desirable and this can have significant benefit for reducing energy demands from artificial lighting in educational spaces.

Urban climatology (UC) is fundamentally interdisciplinary as it draws upon the expertise of several distinct fields including: atmospheric sciences, architecture, engineering, geography and urban planning & design [1]. For a student of UC, integrating the contributions of each to an understanding of urban climate is a challenge; each has a focus on different spatial and time scales and uses different terminology to describe the relevant features/processes from their perspectives. As a result, what represents a solution in one field can create a problem for those working in another. For example, building air conditioning that is used to offset uncomfortably hot outdoor temperatures adds waste energy to the outdoors, contributing to warming and creating an energy demand feedback loop. In this paper, we describe the London Urban Climate Walk and how it is used to explore urban microclimates and teach the principles of urban climatology. The walk treats the participants as a mobile ‘weather stations’ and links their sensory faculties to climate processes. The paper will present the results of atmospheric measurements taken along the route and of interviews with participants.

Non-atomizing misting systems have typically been employed to alleviate the problem of thermal heat stress among occupants and have been shown to be effective especially in temperate countries. However, its impact in tropical countries is not widely studied and it is the same for the impact of the water temperature on reducing air and skin temperature. Using CFD simulation models, this paper seeks to address these gaps. A Langrangian-Eulerian approach is adopted using the Steady K-Epsilon turbulence model and Discrete Phase Model in Ansys Fluent software. Inputs for misting spray and modelling human skin are adopted from other published papers, and Grid Independence studies are also conducted. The results show that Misting sprays can cool the air temperature by up to 4.5oC, based on a hot afternoon condition in Singapore and there is an almost linear relationship between water temperature and cooling effect. At 3m downstream from nozzle, a 45oC water temperature leads to neither decrease nor increase in air temperature. Skin temperatures can also be reduced by a maximum of 3oC. Due to thermal properties of water, even 95oC water temperature only increases air temperature by less than 4oC.

3DFOGTECH© is a water enhancement technology applied in fog collection. This study is focus on geo-climatic data collection in selected fog sites, including design and structural test. 3DFOGTECH© is a portable, lightweight and modular polyhedral space-frame with light-coloured and water-repellent textile screens that collects condensed water drops in 360° from fog promoted by physical surface effects such as cooling, coalescence and condensation following the multi-directionality of winds, without any active energy demand. It offers autonomous water management in water-stressed areas with frequent dense fog events. Previous experiments made by author and collaborators (2010-16) were focused in obtaining efficient forms and designs through lighter space-frames and affordable hydrophobic meshes to secure clean water for drinking and irrigation. 3DFOGTECH© can harvest at least six times more water than planar fog collectors. Tubular frames are made with aluminium, which is a light, strong, durable and recycling material, whilst modular meshes are made with textiles treated with water-repellent coating solutions, light coloured surfaces and natural, synthetic or remanufactured polymers. Advanced design, connectors and structural prototypes are tested digitally and physically. 3DFOGTECH© is an applied research project co-financed by EU H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie and ACCIO TecnioSpring Plus programmes.

The East Ukraine military conflict has caused a large-scale devastation and displacement of millions of people. Most of the families are forced to live in the conditions unfit for human habitation. This paper is based on a research aimed at defining a settlement strategy for the Ukrainian internally displaced persons (IDPs). The study assumed that the displaced families can be settled in the existing rural houses that have been abandoned due to demographical process. The refurbishment of these houses has the potential to satisfy the required needs. Due to the local cold climate, energy efficiency retrofitting solutions, in particular for heat conservation, were studied and assessed with computational simulation.

This work deals with the particulars of urban design in hot climate cities, where direct solar radiation leads to high temperature. This paper considers old part of Jeddah city as a compact neighborhood case study. We address the correlation between Sky View Factor (SVF) and direct solar radiation by orientation, value and time interval in the old Jeddah area, with the aim of adjusting future morphology in order to enhance outdoor thermal conditions. Results show that the sky view factor (SVF) could be an indicator of solar access in an urban morphology. The objective of this study is to identify and discuss the relationship between canyon geometry (size, orientation) and SVF to see how it impacts solar radiation within the urban street.

This paper provides parametric estimates of embodied carbon reduction when structural components are reused in a typical office building. First, a lower bound of structural material quantities is estimated for a typical steel frame structure in a low-rise office building. The embodied carbon of this conventional design is then compared with values collected from a series of similar existing steel buildings (deQo) as benchmark. Various scenarios regarding the impact of selective deconstruction, transportation, and cross-section oversizing are constructed and parameterised. The study eventually computes carbon savings over one life cycle of the building project. Results show that reuse remains beneficial for long transport and high oversizing. The discussion calls for more comprehensive studies and refined metrics for quantifying selective deconstruction.

The paper questions the morphological characteristics of air-conditioned office buildings found in warm humid climates for performance on their indoor climate and thus Energy Utility index (EUI). The investigation involved with 86 multilevel office buildings but identified two critical case buildings with a shallow plan form and similar morphological characteristics such as orientation, occupant and equipment density and façade architecture for a field investigation of heat stress patterns on their facades and thus indoor environment. Measuring indoor air temperature during office hours in 3mX3m multi zones across the depths and lengths of these two buildings using Hobo meters reveals dynamics of air temperatures up to 10.5 degrees C against set point temperatures of 24 degrees C. The work highlight severity of heat stress on air conditioned indoor environments and thus an issue related to shallow plan form typology but to be addressed for energy sustainability.

Building data are required to initialise urban canopy parametrisations in atmospheric models. Improving the precision of such data enhances the accuracy of model outputs and enables us to better simulate the urban surface energy balance and the potential impacts of climate change on cities. This study aims to characterise buildings in Hong Kong using a locally-adapted approach, taking into consideration its subtropical climate, rapid urban development process, and complex high-density environment. We identify 18 building archetypes distinguished by their morphology and use. For these we define building architectural characteristics and human behaviour schedules. These parameters are intended for use in fine scale urban climate simulations with the Town Energy Balance (TEB). Subsequent findings may be applied for urban planning and climate change impact studies.

Building a house using traditional rammed earth construction technique helps farmers to reduce the building cost and improve thermal comfort by using passive thermal strategies. Experimented in 2006, in rural area with cold winter and hot summer (Chinese official division of climate zones), by building a 264 square meters house, thanks to the support of Generalkonsulat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Shanghai, it cost 80’000 RMB. Furthermore, this cost can be reduced to half if the farmers built it themselves. The building has been renovated in recent years and this study is based on its current state. This paper will present the scientific research of the different passive design strategies of this modern rammed house, employed to ensure thermal comfort without a mechanical heating or cooling system. The composition of the loam, the structure of the roof, the orientation and the surrounding local bamboo are the main contributors. The data were collected every 10 minutes for air temperature and relative humidity and were used to analyse the indoor conditions. This research will be of great importance not only for the energy efficiency, but also for the re-appreciation of the traditional residence construction method.

BIM use on the rise in New Zealand with popular software packages, including Revit and ARCHICAD, adopting a semi-automated simulation platform. This allows architects and designers to calculate the thermal and energy performance of their designs. This paper aims to identify the strengths and weaknesses of these semi-automated simulation platforms. The objective is to investigate how accurate their assumptions are in determining a reliable output for use in achieving compliance with Clause H1 of the New Zealand Building Code. To achieve this, this paper will conduct a comparative study that examines the software’s ability to calculate construction R-values, interpret thermal properties and simulate energy performance. The results from this study show that there is a significant difference between the simulation results of the two software packages, due to the assumptions made by the default settings. It also identifies the disadvantages of the inbuilt construction R-value calculators and explores a potential path to resolving this through redefining the inputs of thermal properties.

In high-density urban areas in Asia, pedestrian-level wind environment is highly-related to human health and thermal comfort. However, it is still uncertain how irregular breezeways should be connected and oriented for optimizing the pedestrian-level wind velocity ratio (VRw). This paper used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to compare VRw in regular and irregular breezeway patterns in four actual high-density urban areas of Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. Two representative wind directions were considered for each urban area. The simulation method was validated by the wind tunnel experimental data of an actual urban area in Japan. Three indices, road density (RD), irregularity ratio (IR) and building coverage ratio (BCR), were proposed to estimate VRw by applying regression analysis. The paper suggests the following results: 1) urban patterns with lower RD and BCR have better ventilation regardless of wind directions; 2) urban patterns with higher IR tends to benefit the airflow penetration in the deep urban area; 3) BCR (R-squared = 0.7488), as a single index, can most effectively estimate VRw; 4) IR together with BCR (R-squared = 0.9805) can more effectively estimate VRw. The proposed indices, especially IR, may help planners to improve road pattern design for obtaining better ventilation.

This paper discusses the comfort and energy impact of green actions for schools in northern China. Green roof, green façade, tree planting and grass pavement, were evaluated using a case study regarding their outdoor discomfort hours and building cooling demand in summer. Results show that planting trees is the most effective school design strategy in both reducing discomfort time and cooling demand. Green roof and green façade can also decrease the building cooling demand, yet with little effects on the outdoor comfort. Natural grass pavement has only a slight effect on both the outdoor comfort and building cooling demand.

This study is aimed to provide reliable evidences of occupants’ view clarity through window affected by direction and angle of the shading blinds for multi-objective design optimization. The study was performed in a lab of Tianjin University in northeast of China, with 18 human subjects, and the data were collected to analyse the relationship between different external shading blinds and view clarity through window. Then the results were used to develop an empirical model to calculate the angle of external shading blinds that can qualify the minimum view clarity level. It can be concluded that the angle of horizontal shading blinds should not exceed 33.2°and the angle of vertical shading blinds should not exceed 48.4°so as to reach the minimum view clarity level.

School buildings in Manila are ill equipped to deal with the high demand for student places. This has manifested in overly dense classrooms, which in combination with standardised geometries has led to poor thermal and daylighting conditions. This research contextualises passive design strategies from literature and built precedents then applies these approaches to a theoretical classroom. The result is a design proposal that improves indoor comfort through simple interventions in geometry, ventilation, and materiality.

This paper presents the application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithms to develop forecast models to predict future energy consumption, outdoor weather and indoor microclimatic conditions in a historical art gallery. Each of these prediction models were implemented on two separate cases of sampling frequencies – daily and hourly sampling; providing a case of day-ahead and a case of hour-ahead predictions, respectively. The ANN models were trained with historical real-data obtained from the various sources, such as building sensors, building management information, and MetOffice. Excellent accuracy in the prediction results were observed through the statistical platform of coefficient of correlation (R) between the real-data and the ANN-predicted counterpart. It was observed that the prediction models for hour-ahead forecasting performed stronger compared to the same for day-ahead forecasting for all the cases of outdoor weather parameters, indoor microclimatic parameters, and NGS energy consumption parameters. The study further reinstates that the ANN-based forecast models can prove to be an ideal platform to investigate various optimisation strategies of the building operation in future, especially in the case of restrictive traditional building types where any retrofit solution needs a strong scientific backing before practical implementation.

As a response to the need to find urban solutions to the energy and food dependency in Singapore and to reduce the overall carbon footprint the concept of productive facades is proposed for residential buildings. Departing from the premise that buildings and the urban environment should not solely be the recipient but also the producer of energy, food and water; eight façade design arrangements have been optimised and built at the Tropical Technologies Lab at the National University of Singapore. All proposed facades, with and without balconies, integrates photovoltaic (PV) panels with farming systems as a way to partially supply energy and vegetables to the residents. In addition, the impact of the façade arrangement on indoor thermal and visual performance is also taken into account. The objective of the paper is to present the final design of the productive façade prototypes and the measurement strategy corresponding to the first three months from August till October 2018 in terms of PV electricity generation, vegetable growth and indoor thermal and visual conditions. A comparison with simulation results is expected to be made for four façade systems.

Most methods to analyse and understand the residential energy use features rely on invasive measurements, such as energy monitoring systems, which eventually affects the reliability of pattern classifications. This paper, thus, adopts a non-invasive method using unsupervised data mining algorithms to analyse hourly energy consumption data in order to learn the occupant’s lifestyle and energy consumption behavioral patterns. The study analyses hourly energy use of 298 households in Texas in 2015, using an online open source data set - Pecan Street Dataport. This study scientifically identified household’s energy use features and associated behavioural patterns through a multi scale observation of the clusters. As the contribution, this study takes the house age and size into account as these variables may significantly affect building energy use patterns. Second, it takes dissimilarity measures into account by using TSclust R package for clustering time series. And third, introduces a method of multiscale observation of clusters in order to interpret the lifestyle patterns. Finally, the results demonstrated how data mining techniques might be utilized to help investigating energy use data from the behavioural perspective.

This paper reviews sixteen residential schemes that represent the range of urban typologies encountered around London, UK. Fieldwork and detailed analytical studies conducted on each scheme provided insights on environmental performance and the connections between type, architectural design and performance. The study demonstrates the potential for passive design to lead to free-running buildings that do not require conventional space heating while also highlighting an increasing problem with overheating that is affecting smaller, highly insulated dwellings of recent construction.

This paper presents a prototype classroom-field interactive teaching and research tool, named Interactive Satellite Solar Lab (ISSL) that transcends the physical boundary of conventional classrooms and expands the venue of teaching and learning to out-of-doors. Tethered wirelessly to the classroom, the satellite lab empowers students to examine real-time performance of solar systems in real world settings. While experiments are conducted in remote settings by a team of students, their experiments and collected data are communicated instantly to the classroom instructor and students. The visual images and collected data from field experiments are simulcast in the classroom where the instructor and other students are viewing them. The data gathered from the field are transmitted to the instructor’s and students’ PCs or cellular phones. Activities of onsite experiments can be recorded and projected in the classroom. The field team and the classroom students are able to assess field conditions, make decisions, and perform experiments together. The ISSL was developed by a multidisciplinary team of faculty and students in an effort to transform the environmental dimension of architectural education, and to explore and promote a next generation pedagogic paradigm for science and engineering.

The goal of this study is to investigate the academic efforts to apply Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in architectural design. CFD refers to a computational method for predicting the movement of fluid. Since airflow is an important issue in architecture, CFD can be a helpful tool in architectural design. Specifically, the benefit of using CFD can be maximized if it can be used from the beginning of the design process. However, the complexity of CFD has been a barrier to be utilized in the early stages of design. Although the development of new software made CFD more accessible for architectural designers, it caused another problem of blind users who cannot interpret the simulation results. With a qualitative and interview-based research method, this study explores the current position of CFD in architectural design education. Former instructors and students of two CFD courses offered at two design-oriented architecture programs in the US participated in the interviews. Through the interviews, this study questions the future direction of CFD for architectural design education.

For the complex smart systems of the future, you need highly educated engineers to design systems which not only carry out their needed functionality but also are low power, which in turn benefits all people. Learning hardware modelling with a hardware modelling language like VHDL is an extensive undertaking, which involves practice by solving many assignments independently. Providing an adequate learning experience is a difficult task due to large classes and different types of learners. This paper presents the VHDL E-Learning System, an automated assessment system to give students tasks and automated feedback and therefore provides students the possibility to increasingly build up their proficiency in designing digital systems.

‘Community Energy’ refers to people working together to reduce and manage energy use, and increase and support local energy generation. It can help promote the infrastructural, social and cultural changes we need to reduce the impact of climate change and increase energy security. The core part of community energy initiatives is people, and therefore engagement is essential. In this work, the authors appraised three innovative mechanisms used to engage residents in Project SCENe (Sustainable Community Energy Networks), an ongoing research and development community energy scheme in a real-world setting involving 31 homes in its first phase along the banks of Nottingham’s River Trent. New tools for improving crucial consumer and citizen engagement, participation, co-production and demand-side management were used and their efficacy analysed. These included a user engagement platform, an energy interaction model and in-home smart technology. The findings presented here epitomise the centrality of social-technological interdependencies and the importance of social and collective processes throughout these. It was concluded that civil society were essential actors in the services used and shaped through the passive and active processes that underpin what we do and why, and that utilising these in interrelated methods supports the development and outcomes of such projects.

This paper aimed at an approximation of daylight availability metrics and users 'perceptions in order to understand if the daylight metrics approach the users' visual experience on the sufficiency of natural light in classroom spaces in the city of Florianopolis / SC, Brazil. The study allowed the comparison of the results by simulations of Daylight Autonomy performed throughout the software DIVA Plug-in Rhinoceros 5.0, with visual perception drawings, conducted by 256 users of three classroom environments. This comparison indicated which simulated parameters correspond more closely to the evaluations of daylit area, partially daylit area and non daylit area in study spaces. There was a greater proximity between the DA500lux [50%]/ DA 250lux [50%] parameters in the first two rooms studied, and DA 300lux [50%] / DA 150lux [50%] in the third room analysed. The results evidenced the relation of aspects of visual perception not only with illuminance values, but also with the physical measurements of surface brightness, expressed through luminance. Since it is known that in addition to criteria of horizontal illuminance levels in the work plane, several factors influence the process of visual perception and characterization of the conditions of the light environment.

The purpose of this research was to identify the habitability conditions presented by house for low-income families in an area with extreme hot dry climate such as Mexicali. Field work was carried out, through surveys. Based on the opinion of the occupants of the dwelling, their perception of spatial, psychosocial and thermal conditions of their dwelling were obtained. The results show which the psychosocial aspects, such as perception of security, privacy and pride, are at adequate levels, however, the thermal habitability showed problems throughout the year.

Artisan brick fabrication in Mexican communities are known to have social backwardness, this generates human health and environmental issues due to high levels of pollution. This study shows an improvement proposal for the locality of San Diego Cuachayotla, leading brick producer in Mexico. It focuses and highlight the main problems of the chain production, through a participative diagnose methodology. As a result, an integral project was designed, in stages. A first one with the construction of a proposal including an improved productive space, a living area, a family orchard garden, fruit trees, and family farm area to supply and promote a scheme for self-sufficiency. The improvements of the productive chain were developed following the «Best Available Techniques» concept, and an ecologic oven MK2 was chosen due to its high energy efficiency, to its pollutants reduction and fuel savings at low cost and feasible technology. This project shows how utilizing inclusive diagnosis methodology following a selection of best options available can help to improve quality of life as well as a reduction on the environmental impact focused on specific community needs and demands.

The aim of this study is to clarify detailed typical daily patterns of occupants’ behaviour of window-opening and air-conditioning in hot-humid climates. Face-to-face interviews for 1,570 typical households were carried out in Malaysia and Indonesia. All samples were divided into several groups, based on the city climates and air-conditioner ownership, and subdivided through a principal component analysis and a hierarchical cluster analysis. The result shows the daily patterns of occupants’ behaviour in hot-humid cities is clearly different from those in relatively cool city. Windows tend to be opened during daytime even if air-conditioner is installed, while air-conditioners are mainly used during sleep time.