Double skin façades may help combine a high degree of transparency with high thermal and solar performance. Advanced façades serve as filters and may be responsive to changes in environmental conditions and occupant requirements. Since the strategies for

This paper describes a modular facade system, which supplies the room behind with the necessary amounts of heat, light and fresh air. Aims of the development of this facade were both to achieve a high degree of comfort for the users and to save energy in comparison to a conventional facade. The experimental investigations to assess and to optimize the facade system were performed in a PASLINK test cell. These test cells allow measurements of the thermal and solar performance of facade elements in original dimensions and under natural climate conditions.

The present paper aims to present a distant learning educational module that concerns the energy efficient integrated building design in the urban environment. The educational material of the module includes a handbook, computerized tools, examples of urban buildings, libraries on energy efficient products and materials and climatic documentation of climatic data measured in various European urban areas.

An energy balance over an urban area and over a rural one, reveals that the first case is always more complex than the last one. The urban context is able to change all the energy transferences mainly due to its own layout. Thus, analysing all the energy transferences one by one, we can find how they affect in a different way depending on the surroundings, among other influences.

Noise measurements were made at 10 locations in ‘canyon’ streets in Athens with aspect ratio (height/width) varying from 3:1 to 1:1. The main purpose of the measurements was to examine the vertical variation in noise in the canyons to indicate the natural

Measurements of wind speed and wind direction, air temperature inside and outside an urbancanyon also infrared radiation in buildings have been measured on summer 2001 in Athens, in fivedifferent urban canyons, in the frame of Urbvent project. Urban canyons with different geometricalcharacteristics and orientation were placed in five different neighborhoods in Athens.Measurements took place in four different height levels inside each canyon, in the facades ofthem, also in the top of each canyon.

The quality of indoor environment in dwellings is provided by physical properties of building constructions and by operation of HVAC-systems. From the point of view of comfort, energy and economy as well as HVAC-system are designed and operated to maintain an acceptable indoor climate, i.e. an acceptable air quality and thermal environment play the key role in dwellings.

About 100 office buildings in the Flanders and Brussels regions have been subject to a surveyof energy aspects and indoor climate parameters. Building characteristics and energy use havebeen mapped for all buildings; for 48 of them a database has been built containing buildingand room dimensions, materials used for the building shell, windows, glazing, solar shading,occupancy, equipment characteristics (heating, ventilation, cooling, lighting, office equipment.

In this work a methodology for indoor environmental quality assessment was applied, based on thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort indices and on their analysis and spatial representation.Object of the study was one secondary school classroom of the Province of Torino (Italy), representative of several typologies of educational buildings, showing unsatisfactory environmental conditions.

A field survey on thermal comfort in Algeria has never been previously attempted, and for this reason the present study was conducted. The present paper will present a field study of thermal comfort in Algeria. A thermal comfort survey has been held among 160 persons in 4 towns of Algeria representing three different climatic regions. The survey has been carried out in two different types of buildings: Domestic buildings and Office buildings. Subjective data were collected from 160 people by the use of questionnaires.