English

This paper presents a passive design strategy where thermal comfort is achieved by engaging the occupants to define their own comfort condition and vary the quality of the space according to their needs. Two naturally ventilated houses in South Australia designed with this approach were tested and their actual performance documented. The results showed that most of the time the houses were always comfortable without any assistance from active systems.

The measurement and simulation of energy consumption and comfort is undertaken for a primary school in Melbourne, Australia. Four classrooms are measured providing data sets of air temperature, humidity, heating and lighting energy consumption in conjunction with external weather measurements over a full year. The primary investigation is to assess two different heating systems: electric radiant ceiling panels versus gas convective air heating.

We made a series of subjective experiments to grasp individual behaviours and thermal sensation of the occupants in as actual environmental conditions as possible by observation using video cameras. The use of video cameras allows us to have the time-series of scenes of the occupants participating in the experiment; it also allows us to avoid disturbing their natural behaviours and sensations.

Wind access/protection in cities can be affected by the morphological characteristics of the built environment. Town-planning legislation, building codes and city plan regulations influence those characteristics. Substantial climate-responsive changes of such laws and by-laws as well as simplified environmental performance evaluation tools can contribute to the reduction of mechanical ventilation and air conditioning energy loads through natural ventilation-proned urban design.

As streets usually cover more than a quarter of the urban area, canyon street morphology plays an important role in creating the urban climate. It directly influences the air temperature, moisture and wind flow within the streets as well as the urban surrounding area and has been the topic in several urban climatology studies. Recently, studies based on the street Cluster Thermal Time Constant (CTTC) model have been carried out by the authors with a view to assessing the thermal effects of alternative architectural designs of the flanking buildings and inner courtyards.

We describe the potential of using hygroscopic materials that release moisture and latent heat in order to reduce the temperature of building envelopes and, there upon, conduction cooling loads. It is analysed 3 different weathers and a classic Brazilian wall with different values of paint permeance on both external and internal surfaces. The results are presented in terms of temperature, moisture content profiles and heat fluxes, showing how to save energy from the natural movement of moisture.

This article talks about the solutions that the vernacular architecture of desert areas in Iran has used to survive against undesirable climatic conditions. It is a partial result of a research that has been done by the author in 1994 in Shahid Beheshti University in Iran. It discusses and assesses climatic problems and living discomfort of the Zavareh, a small historical city in Esfahan province.

The results of numerical simulation on the effects of solar chimney for ventilation in the new building of Faculty of International Environmental Engineering Kitakyushu University, Japan are described. The air velocity and pressure within the solar chimney were estimated by simplified methods and CFD calculation and both results agreed quite well. It was found that the air flow rates would depend on the inside wall temperatures and section ratio of solar chimney with the same section area.

A scale mock-up house installed with a "Breathing Wall" was constructed outdoors in order to consider the practical application of breathing walls in houses in temperate-climate regions. It was found that, under outdoor weather conditions, the Breathing Wall provides the necessary amount of ventilation, thermal insulation and moisture transmission required for application in a temperate climate region. No adverse effects on the indoor environment were found even when cold outdoor air flowed through the Breathing Wall.

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.