BUILDING SCIENCE 1

 

PROJECT 1: Case Study: Analysing passive design strategies

 

Passive design does not require mechanical heating or cooling. Buildings that are passively designed take advantage of natural climate to maintain thermal comfort.

Incorporating the principles of passive design in building:

* Significantly improves comfort

* Reduces or eliminates heating and cooling bills

* Reduces greenhouse gas emissions from heating, cooling, mechanical ventilation and lighting.

Building envelope is a term used to describe the roof, walls, windows, floors and internal walls of a building. In a tropical climate, the envelope should controls heat gain and exclusion of rainwater. Well-designed envelopes maximize cooling through air movement and exclude the solar radiation. The fundamental principles of passive design are relatively simple and can be applied to various climate zones, house types and construction systems.

 

The objectives of this project are:

* To identify and define the principles of heat transfer in relation to building and people

* To understand what is thermal comfort and discuss factors relating to thermal comfort

* To analyze the effect of thermal comfort factors in a person and in a space

* To be able to criticize design of the space in terms of thermal comfort by referring to MS1525 , UBBL, GBI and Green Mark standards.

 

In a group of 6, we were assigned to choose a building that best features 2 passive design strategy for tropical climate in Klang Valley which is the Platinum Sentral in Kuala Lumpur. We started with researches on the passive design strategies, the principles and details needed for these passive design strategies to perform best in tropical climate and to achieve thermal comfort in this building/space. Before the identification, we had to work on analysis related to the climate. We used the Revit software and Ecotect software to aid in proving that the passive design strategy is effective in this building. Moreover, the monitored temperatures, the effects of solar radiation, thermal mass, insulation, and ventilation.

 

From the analysis, we narrowed down our choices to the natural ventilation and green wall as it best represented the solution for the thermal comfort issues in our site context.