PC
Project 1
Case Study:
Analysing passive design strategies
Introduction
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.
Throughout this project. it really act as an eye opener for me towards the passive design. We went for a trip to Singapore, and get to exposed to various passive design taken in action. Passive design act as a great helper in healing the earth as it cooling down the place by decreasing ennergy consumed.
The future architecture should be in this direction in order to make the earth more sustainable.
The building we did for this project is Educational Resource Center which locarted at U-town National University of Singapore. It is a great buidling in singapore as it had won a lot of awards. The design of paasive design such as green roof , low-e glass and various sun shading devices had let the interior to be more exposed to the nature without HVAC system which reduce down the energy consumed and wastage produced to the surrounding. This are then anable the students to study at teh area without any active cooling devices like air-conditional. Besides, surrounding building also taken in consideration. In terms of shading, the surrounding building actually provide shade towards the ERC buiding and the existence of roof pond at teh neighbour builidng allow evaporational cooling to be happened.
Consideration of passive design not only bring a more sustainable building, it also gives an asthetic appearance. It should be inserted into building design nowadays, for us and for our next generation, in order to create a healthier and longer life time motehr earth. :)