Category Archives: Conference Paper
An Interactive Performance-Based Expert System for Daylighting Design
Architects are increasingly using digital tools during the design process, particularly as they approach complex problems such as designing for successful daylighting performance. However, while simulation tools may provide the designer with valuable information, they do not necessarily guide the … Continue reading
Architectural Pride and Environmental Prejudice: The effect of personal status, historical value, and indoor décor on occupants indoor environmental quality in offices
This paper reports on an important yet unexplored area of indoor comfort studies, the relationship between historical attributes of buildings, personal values, and indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of office spaces. For this study we employed a comparative case study design … Continue reading
High Density, Low Energy: Achieving useful solar access for Dublin’s Multi-storey Apartment Developments
Solar energy has quantitative and qualitative benefits in the city, from reducing energy consumption to improving both indoor and outdoor amenity. However, gaining access to solar energy becomes increasingly difficult in high density developments, where orientation may not be optimal and … Continue reading
Life Cycle Inventory of Extremely Low Energy Dwellings
A global methodology is developed to optimize concepts for extremely low energy dwellings, taking into account energy use, environmental impact, and financial costs over the life cycle of the buildings. Energy simulations are executed with TRNSYS. The ecological impact is … Continue reading
Air Ventilation Assessment System for High Density Planning and Design
In 2003, Hong Kong was hit by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) from which many people died. The Hong Kong Government subsequently set up a Team Clean Committee to investigate possible infectious disease prevention measures and policies. One of the … Continue reading
Integration and Formal Development of Solar Thermal Collectors
The paper presents selected results of an investigation over possible ways to improve Building Integrated Solar Thermal systems (BIST) on the formal level. It shows the results of a European survey intended to help defining quality in the architectural integration … Continue reading
Theory and Practice of Natural Ventilation in a Theatre
We report on a detailed monitoring exercise and an analogue experimental study of a naturally ventilated theatre in operation in the UK which can take audiences up to 300 people. The theatre has a raked seating area, and two outflow … Continue reading
Engaging Engineering and Architectural Students in the Integrated Design Process (IDP) for a Competition Entry Demonstration House – the Solar Decathlon
Since April of 2003, a group of students from Concordia University and Université de Montréal has been preparing their entry to the Second Solar Decathlon competition to be held in September 2005. Their goal is to design, build and operate … Continue reading
Passive Downdraught Cooling: hybrid cooling in the Malta Stock Exchange
The use of cooling in buildings is continuing to increase in Europe. This is raising concern that it will undermine the European Community’s drive toward reducing CO2 emissions. To counter this trend, there is increasing interest in evaporative cooling in … Continue reading
Analyzing the microclimatic influence of urban canyon geometry with an open-air scale model
A novel approach is developed for modeling the influence of street canyon geometry on microclimatic conditions within the urban canopy. A physical scale-model of an urban roughness array was constructed in open-air conditions to enable the measurement of climatic parameters … Continue reading