Indigenous architecture’s adaption to its climate and its use of local materials has attracted interest in the search for a sustainable built environment. In Chile surviving examples include the iconic Ruka Lafkenche and the little known Fogón Pehuenche. United by the world outlook of the Mapuche people, these two examples are located in different climates and as a result different construction systems have developed.

This paper describes a pilot study testing the applicability of using building performance simulation (BPS) to quantify the impact of 28 energy saving behaviour changes on the residential space heating demand, based on a mid-terraced house located in the southwest of England. The 28 behaviour change options were collected based on a combination of literature review and expert knowledge. DesignBuilder V3.2, whose thermal dynamic simulation engine is Energyplus 7.2, was used to predict the impact of each behaviour change option on the space heating demand of the case study house.

The need to identify occupants’ behaviour-responses to thermal discomfort during the heating season has become one of the priorities in the quest to reduce energy demand. The current models have long been associated with people’s behaviour by predicting their state of thermal comfort or rather discomfort. These assumed that occupants would act upon their level of discomfort through two-types of response set as involuntary mechanisms of thermoregulation, and behaviour-responses.

For testing different engineering solutions for energy-efficient buildings, a low-energy building was built at the University of Tokyo as a pilot project. In this building, a radiant heating/cooling ceiling panel system is used. This study aims to not only clarify the system performance but also to share our experience and results for them to serve as a reference for other similar projects. Here, the system performance in relation to its heating/cooling capacity and thermal comfort has been evaluated.

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 need for zero carbon buildings is changing the trial-and-error process that Architectural design has traditionally employed towards a system that allows wider analysis capacity at the conceptual stage. By visualizing design as a “Black Box” where the composition variable B can be cleared from knowing the stimuli S and the desired response R; optimal solutions arise to the surface.

In this work is analyzed the improvement of comfort conditions using confluent jets ventilation located near the floor level in front to the occupants in an experimental chamber. In this study are evaluated the thermal comfort, the local thermal discomfort and the air quality levels. The thermal comfort level is evaluated using the multi-nodal human thermal comfort numerical model, while the local thermal discomfort and the air quality levels are evaluated by the computational fluid dynamics numerical model.

This survey was designed to investigate university student rooms to realize energy savings related to thermal control use and the relations among thermal sensation, clothing insulation, and outdoor air temperature in pre-cooling and post-cooling seasons. Results revealed the following: 1) Phase shifts to the outdoor air temperature mutually differ in pre-cooling and post-cooling seasons. 2) For neutral temperatures, although the effect of pre-cooling makes the act of opening a window less likely, that is not true in the post-cooling season.

Increasing personal comfort by heating office building occupants locally means that the lower setpoint for space heating. Less energy will be used when the total energy demand from all individual comfort systems together is lower than the energy saved by lowering the setpoint. The energy saving potential is dependent on the specific characteristics of the individual heating. The important performance characteristics are the energy used per unit of mitigated discomfort and the maximum discomfort that can be compensated for.

Floor heating is characterized by small horizontal and vertical temperature differences, and might be especially suitable for Japanese homes where it is customary to sit on the floor. This paper compares thermal comfort in homes while floor heating systems and air conditioning systems were in use during winter. Each dwelling had both a floor heating system and an air conditioning system, each used on alternate weeks during the survey period.  Throughout the survey periods residents were asked about their current thermal sensation, thermal preference, overall comfort and foot-comfort.