Designing for natural ventilation: law courts.

There is considerable interest in possible designs for naturally ventilated Law Courts, which avoid the need for air conditioning. However, design requirements make it difficult to locate windows for ventilation purposes. A proposed alternative is based around the concept of providing summertime ventilation via an underfloor duct and controllable vents at roof level, under the action of wind and buoyancy forces alone. This option was assessed through a computer study to predict the ventilation flows into several variations of a general court-room design over a range of meteorological conditions and internal temperatures. The ventilation performance during the summermonths was assessed using a new statistical approach. Improvements to the performance of the above design are demonstrated by results for a proposed Crown Court complex to be built near Canterbury.