Development of a thermally robust school outline design for the different climate regions of Turkiye

This paper presents the development of a novel school outline design, which can be applied in the different climate zones of Turkiye, underpinned by building performance simulation. The work builds on an earlier study, presented at the Building Simulation 2007 conference, which analysed the sensitivity of an existing scheme that had indeed been applied in all different climate zones, with different degrees of success. This follow-on project goes one step further and attempts to develop a new, more thermally robust school outline design. The underlying research bases itself on building performance simulation, using the ESP-r simulation engine and applying global sensitivity analysis (Monte Carlo Method) to assess the robustness of different design variants in a large, multidimensional option space of outline design parameters. The outcome of the study is an outline design concept called Modulsco that is significantly more robust than the current general scheme.  Overall, this paper demonstrates how building simulation can contribute to the pre-design of better (school) buildings. It is hoped that the scheme will help make these future buildings more comfortable and more energy efficient.