Building envelope design as a passive cooling technique

Envelope design as a means of passive cooling is the integrated design of building form and materials as a total system to achieve optimum comfort and energy savings. This paper aims at highlighting the role of envelope design in determining the efficiency of passive cooling in the building. The paper consists of two major parts. First, the theoretical part, illustrates the main elements of design for passive cooling, and particularly the elements related to envelope design. Second, the applied study of the paper analyzes the envelope design techniques in two different examples of Egyptian touristic projects on the red sea coast. The paper has developed a checklist for envelope design techniques to provide architects with the principles and design strategies for envelope design as a passive cooling technique. It also has examined using a special computer program a simulated model representing a composition of modular hotel room units to determine the influence of changing orientation and building shape as elements of the building envelope on the needed cooling energy.