In 1993, the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, refurbished the open-plan first floor Design Studio in their Publishing Department to use natural ventilation to keep the interior cool. At the same time the third floor, which was not suitable for passive cooling, was fitted with mechanical comfort cooling units and the intermediate floor was not changed. This paper compares tl1e thermal performance of the three floors and discusses the results of a staff-satisfaction survey conducted among the occupants.
The role of metallic surfaces is not only to save energy in winter and in summer by separating the inside and the outside. New and inexpensive ways of collecting solar energy for internal heating, new ways of ventilating, heating and cooling through the fabric elements are described. Two very significant prospects are : radiative cooling by metallic surfaces and enhancement of indirect daylighting by optimised ceilings. The subject of the European CURES program is to promote these new technologies by simulating and testing them.
A bioclimatic house for Tamare, Venezuela, designed to provide psychological, physical and social well being through improved comfort and less energy consumption is explained. Digital and analog models were built to analyze sunlight and shadow behavior and computer simulations to predict thermal performance. Assuming a maximum comfort temperature of 30° C we achieve<! 95% of satisfaction when we ventilated at night and closed the building during daytime.
The examination of the "Young-am House", a traditional folk house located in the middle region of the Korean peninsula, aims to analyze and to inform the bio-climatic design of the building and interior spaces based in the traditional architecture of Korea. As a consequence of the examination, it was evident that bioclimatic design performed an important part in creating a natural environment for comfortable living by taking consideration of the changing local climatic conditions.
In equatorial warm humid climates, ventilation has been largely adopted as a major strategy for natural passive cooling. In those climates the use porous elements are common to allow for permanent ventilation as temperature rarely drops below 20°C. Nevertheless, the performance of many building components has not been thoroughly determined, making it difficult to predict buildings performance as ventilation rates, estimated in most simulation codes are often based on apertures typologies from temperate and cold regions.
Studies at the Oxford Brookes University have shown that opportunities for improving a building's fabric thermal storage performance relate more to aspects of its configuration, control and ventilation strategy than the choice of structural system.
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