hot climate

Hispano-Islamic architecture addresses a great concern about summer heat. The seasonal high temperatures and dry atmosphere of southern Spain constituted a real challenge for the XIV-century Muslim builders of the Generalife. This small palace shows clearly a series of environmental strategies involving cooling due to its condition of summer villa for the sultans of Granada. This paper is based on a PhD research project on the Environmental Aspects of Hispano-Islamic Architecture carried out by the author under supervision of Simos Yannas.

The traditional architecture of the city of Sana's is considered to be one of the best examples of architectural heritage in the world. It also reflects the builders' full understanding of local traditional building materials and of the climatic environment. Building airflow helps maintain comfort in these buildings and therefore the aim behind this study is to understand how the vernacular houses of the old city of Sana's perform in terms of natural ventilation. The study also examines the role of air temperature and wind speed in natural ventilation.

The office workers in Bangkok are accustomed to their environments of a hot-humid climate, resulting in a wider range of acceptable temperatures and higher comfort zone than the recommendation in moderate climate countries. This gives the possibility to use natural ventilation as a tool to provide occupants preference and comfort zone in office buildings, considering a short time experience.

This paper describes a thermal comfort survey of people living in courtyard housing. The study took place in the Iranian city of Ilam, which experiences a hot, dry climate. The survey compared the thermal comfort conditions of people outside using the courtyard housing, and was conducting during the hot summer season. Over 570 subjects responded to thermal comfort questionnaires. At the same time physical measurements were taken of such parameters as dry bulb air temperature, relative humidity and air velocity.

This paper examines the conditions of a relatively large courtyard (45 by 10 meters), enclosed by a one-story building, located in the Negev Lowlands. The region is characterised by hot, dry summer days, and wide temperature and relative humidity fluctuations. The courtyard was monitored under extreme conditions typical of the hot spells, common during transition periods, during which even night minima are sometimes well above the comfort zone.

This paper describes the Architectural Design Studies undertaken by Mario Cucinella Architects as part of a three year JOULE research project into the application of Passive Downdraught Evaporative Cooling (PDEC) in non-domestic buildings. The objective of the research was to develop a viable passive alternative to air-conditioning through architectural design, experimentation and performance assessment.

Passive Downdraught Cooling is a technique which will potentially become a substitute for conventional air-conditioning in Southern Europe and the hot dry regions of the world. As well as providing substantial energy savings, the technique avoids the need for ductwork, fans and suspended ceilings, and reduces the need for refrigerant based cooling. However, this approach has architectural implications which extends the vocabulary of 'passive design'.

Examines the difficulties of ensuring occupant comfort in challenging climates and less developed areas of the world such as the Galapagos. Temperatures can reach 30 deg C, but rarely go lower than 18 deg C, so no heating is needed. Describes the offices of the Galapagos National Park Service, built largely with low thermal mass and no insulation. Air conditioning and air movement depend on a filter-down effect from a single office.

Analyses present and historical Thai houses in terms of climate, culture and technology, as background to an investigation of the potential for use of natural ventilation as a passive cooling system for new house designs. It suggests that natural ventilation can provide a thermally comfortable indoor environment for 20% of the year. Also develops comprehensive design guidelines for natural ventilation using CFD (computational fluid dynamics).

This is the first of a series of four papers that describe a 3-year EU-funded research project into the application of passive downdraught evaporative cooling to nondomestic buildings. In this paper various evaporative cooling techniques are reviewed. By spraying fine droplets of water at the top of atria, a downdraught of air cooled by evaporation can be produced. Such direct evaporative cooling using an evaporation tower appears to be a suitable approach for partly displacing the need for air-conditioning in hot, dry climates.