Conference Agenda

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.