Conference Agenda

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?