passive design

In recent years, with actualization of a global warming issue, the need for simultaneous pursuit of progress of comfort in living space at residential house and energy saving is now becoming greater and greater. In this study, we investigated the indoor thermal environment and air distribution by natural ventilation at earth sweet home in summer, middle and winter seasons in Japan. This house is designed so that the effect of natural ventilation may become high. We report the results with focus on the effects of indoor thermal and air environment by opening window in middle season.

This paper presents the effect of specific future climate changes scenarios on the resilience of the refurbishment of a 1960s office building in suburban London. A model of the building was created and simulated using IESVE to predict current energy consumption calibrated with operational energy data. Energy efficient improvements were incorporated which mainly consist of improving the insulation and air-tightness of external envelope, reducing solar and internal gain and utilising natural ventilation during the day and night for improving thermal comfort in the summer.

In a world where energy conservation in buildings is an important target, natural ventilation is an important field in which carbon footprint reductions can be achieved. This paper investigates the possibility of creating horizontal channels to deliver natural cross ventilation passively in deep-plan buildings that otherwise would suffer from a lack of fresh air ventilation. The research objective has been to find a new system in which the depth of buildings is no longer an issue when it comes to natural ventilation.

Describes a global approach to passive design of naturally ventilated buildings situated in the French overseas territories. This approach involves all those involved in the buildings creation process, including architect, owner, building physicists and climate engineers. A validated thermal and airflow building simulation software was used to assess the design and sizing. A reference document was created from the optimal technical specifications, and has been used to build over 800 new pilot homes.

The work of Kohn Pedersen Fox (London) emphasises the civic responsibility of buildings and is primarily concerned with the integration of environmentally responsive elements into buildings within a civic context. The development of facades and roofs that perform a range of environmental tasks has been explored through a series of building designs. These use passive environmental control as a contribution to urban design by providing transition zones between street and building that can be used by both the public and building users.

The typical passive design suggested for residential buildings in tropical hothumid climates is a lightweight building with many openings on the north and south walls to allow continuous natural ventilation, shaded by wide overhangs. In reality most people no longer favour this design approach for several reasons: building durability, noise problems. privacy, and social status. The work presented in this paper challenges the typical design suggestions and shows other alternatives that are more suitable for this climatic region.

This paper gives an account of a project to test the effectiveness of simple passive strategies to improve thermal comfort in Government Primary Schools in Pakistan .. Changes for improved thermal performance were carried out on five schools which were monitored both before and after modification. Schools are simple and minimally serviced. Improvements were controlled (as far as possible) to one strategy per classroom to make evaluation as straightforward as possible. An effectiveness score for a range of options has been developed.

Providing people with a quality indoor environment means full air conditioning with an energy use tag that we would rather not mention in the debate about environmental impact and sustainability. But is this really the case? Is it not possible to design mechanical systems so they use less energy than their naturally ventilated counterparts? The law of conservation of energy means we can use the same energy repeatedly. As long as we are aware of how energy is degraded in quality and temperature terms, we can design systems that repeatedly recover and reuse energy.

This paper describes and discusses the energy saving design features of the Learning Resources Centre at Anglia Polytechnic University. As part of the University's policy on environmental conservation, the design brief for this new Queen's Building specified a low energy passive design solution. The building, which has been occupied since September 1994, was awarded a THERMIE grant to demonstrate a 50% reduction in the annual energy related carbon dioxide emissions for a building of this type.