Prevalence and Evaluation of Bioclimatic Design Techniques used to achieve Low Energy Comfort in Architectural Design Proposals

This paper analyses responses of ninety-nine students to a design brief for a public building in different regions of China. The research determined the level of understanding and skills development in students who will be the next generation of building designers, procurers and developers. The students were asked to design in a bioclimatic fashion and therefore to consider the building to be as free running as possible, and thus supportive of adaptive comfort principles. The designed solutions were then analysed to determine: the types of bioclimatic technique chosen to be employed; the actual prevalence of use of the techniques in each case; and the successful implementation within the schemes. The results identify barriers to application in design and define productive areas of future comfort research including analysis of interactions between techniques, and the optimisation of whole building solutions. The adoption of bioclimatic design techniques is complementary to adaptive approaches to thermal comfort and reductions in energy use in buildings.