The paper will summarize the results of an extensive research on sustainable architectural strategies used throughout the history in all climates, but here the results of the temperate climate will be presented. The selected case studies were investigated, regardless of their cultural diversity, ranging from prehistoric to the current settlements, and they were cross-referenced and compared to each other. The relationship between their architectural patterns is examined from a climatic point of view.

The paper describes methodology and results collected from a professional and research experience oriented to design, build up and monitor an innovative passive system for the preventive conservation of the ancient stained glass windows in the Assisis St. Francis Basilica Superior Church.

HEED (Home Energy Efficient Design) shows architects, builders, and homeowners how to design or remodel their buildings to reduce or even eliminate air conditioning loads. It is intended for use at the very beginning of the design process, when most of the critical decisions effecting energy consumption are made. This paper goes step-by-step through a typical building remodeling design using HEED.

Natural ventilation can be successfully applied for passive cooling in order to reduce cooling loads of buildings. Several parameters may have a significant impact on the performance of such a cooling technique, among others: climate, ventilation configuration, thermal mass, control parameters, etc. Within the frame of the PHACES project, a comparative analysis of control strategies in different configurations has been conducted, to underline and to quantify the relative impact of these various parameters. Some of these configurations have been experimentally tested.

Ventilation has a major impact on the global performance of buildings, in terms of energy consumption as well as regarding indoor climate: thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustics. The objective of the Cli'Nat project is to design, within a systemic approach, and to evaluate, by simulations and experiments, the performance of a ventilation and passive cooling system including a dedicated building envelope component and specific control strategies.

The concern to achieve energy efficient performance during the activation of natural ventilation mode inside an office building in New Delhi, India addresses the need of study. This paper is based on a MA research project and describes the relationship observed in coordinating thermal performance and illuminance levels achieved with different depths and designs of shading devices.

The present paper shows an example for an integrated design process combining the design work of the architect, the use of simulation tools and applied research on new combinations of materials, with the aim of the energetic optimization of an architectonical project. This integrated design approach is promoted and applied by CISol- Centre for Solar Research at the School of Architecture ETSAV as a method for a sustainable building design.

This study examines the thermal behavior of an underground space via the analysis of ancient underground dwellings and computer simulation. The analysis of the cave dwellings was done to observe their thermal performance so as to validate the hypothesis of thermal stability due to the great mass of the surrounding soil. The computer simulation was performed to model the situation of a museum which differs from a cave dwelling.

Recent work has been undertaken to determine the most effective passive cooling strategies to be adopted in the refurbishment of large numbers of traditional adobe dwellings in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia. To do this, thermal simulation was used to first determine the sensitivity of each building to different design parameters and then assess the potential effectiveness of a range of different passive cooling strategies. In virtually all aspects of simulation no single algorithm or methodology is perfectly suited to every modelling condition.

Thermal comfort studies have been developed all around the world by many authors and some adaptive comfort models have been proved specifically for warm climates. An educational software developed some years ago for temperate climate, ACT (Program for the Evaluation of Thermal Comfort), by Isalgu and Serra, has been proved and used successfully by students in the Mediterranean climate of Barcelona, since 1992. This software uses an empirical model, based on Fangers PMV.