Design for Sustainability at Seaside

2017

Energy conservation and efficiency is an essential area of focus in contemporary building design. The perception that the designers of buildings during the Modernist period of architecture ignored these principles is a false one. The present study, an examination of Paul Rudolph's Milam Residence, a masterpiece of American residential architecture, is part of a larger project endeavoring to create a knowledge base of the environmental performance of iconic modernist homes. A critical examination of the Milam House allows insight into specific design characteristics that impact energy efficiency and conservation. Located in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, the Milam Residence was constructed in 1962. It was the last of a series of Florida residences designed by Rudolph, Chairman of the Department of Architecture at Yale University (1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965). The structure's form is strongly related to its location on a subtropical beachfront. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the building's solar responsiveness. Specifically, we examine design strategies such as orientation and sunscreening and their effect on daylighting, shading, and heat gain. The analysis is based on parametric energy modeling studies using Autodesk's Ecotect, an environmental analysis tool that allows simulation of building performance. While the initial target of the program was early design, the program allows the input of complex geometries and detailed programming of zones, materials, schedules, etc. The program's excellent analyses of desired parameters are augmented by visualizations that make it especially valuable in communicating results. Our findings suggest that the building, as built and situated on the site, does take advantage of daylighting and solar shading and does so in both expected and unexpected ways. OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2011, 3 2290

2018

Only in recent time, China discovered the great potential of coastal cities as tourist attraction, both from inland and from abroad. The projects are examples of a study of Green Eco Solar Buildings and Seaside Building Project, developed within the ABITA Research Centre of the University of Florence, for this area, developed together with the De Feng Lida Group from Beijing, trying to harmonize traditional Chinese approach with sustainable technologies and renewable energy integration in building. The energy efficiency standards applied in all the Green Eco Solar Buildings will make it possible to realize nearly zero-energy building performance.

ACE Macau - Architecture Culture Environment, 2007

With sustainable architecture, the issue is how to provide the ever increasing levels of comfort expected by the users with the minimum purchased energy. In this sense, the only practicable strategy consists in reducing the amount of additional energy that the building requires for its correct running, or, in other words, in promoting the idea that the building has to work with, and not against, the climate. This means that the building envelope is not only a barrier that protects its users from the elements of nature, but an effective filter that can modulate the external climatic inputs (heat, cold, solar radiation, wind) according to the specific climate and to the season: the traditional building becomes a "climate sensitive building" that reacts to the external conditions in order to maintain a comfortable internal situation. This work discusses the concept and presents three demonstration buildings in the temperate climate of Northern Italy.

Journal of Green Building, 2010

The building envelope plays a key role in achieving building energy efficiency and indoor comfort for the occupants. The most promising (and innovative) strategy for the building envelope of tomorrow is based on a dynamic, active and integrated solution, able to optimize the thermal performance, integrating active elements and systems, exploiting energy from renewable source. Considerable efforts in research and development are necessary to achieve a sustainable and effective building envelope with a dynamic behaviour. Within the field of the light and transparent building envelope, a general trend in research can be drawn: along with the innovation of the façade's subsystems, researchers and producers are moving from the double skin façade concept towards a more complex façade, where the functional strategies are improved and the integration with active elements and the HVAC system is deeper. The most relevant results of a decade-long research activity carried out at the TEBE Research Group at Politecnico di Torino, on active and integrated building envelope, are here presented. The analysis provides useful information about the contribution of each subsystem (e.g. glazing, sun-shading devices, natural and mechanical ventilation...) to the achieved energy efficiency and user thermal comfort. Furthermore, the paper also presents the concept for an innovative façade module -which prototype is currently under constructionconceived in the frame of a National Research Project. The ActResS module (Active, Responsive and Solar module) is a dynamic building envelope element, capable of changing its thermo-physical behaviour in order to maximize the energy efficiency and the environmental comfort of buildings occupants.

2020

As the quote by Vitruvius indicates, designing buildings in harmony with their climates is an age-old idea. To design in conformity with climate, the designer needs to understand the microclimate of the site, since all climatic experience of both people and buildings is at this level. Besides adjusting the building design to the climate, it is also possible, to a limited extent, to adjust the climate to the needs of the building. We cannot agree with Mark Twain when he said, "Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it." It is easy to see how man changes the microclimate by such acts as replacing farmland and forest with the hard and massive materials of cities, irrigating a desert and making it a humid area, and constructing high-rise buildings to form windy canyons. Unfortunately, these changes in the microclimate are rarely beneficial since they are usually done without concern for the consequences. Most serious, however, are the changes we are ma...

Civil and Environmental Engineering Reports, 2022

The paper presents original research, encompassing the results of analyses of modular building façade solutions, as well as innovative design concepts based on these results by students of the Faculty of Architecture at the Poznań University of Technology. Adapting architecture to climate change is the main objective behind research and innovative designs. Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, thermal comfort of buildings, better thermal environment ergonomics for users of buildings' interiors, increased energy efficiency together with the use of renewable energy sources are major challenges for today's designers. Dealing with rainwater, wind and pressure changes are already absolute necessities. Contemporary trends in modern construction in urban areas were identified on the basis of results of analyses of selected existing buildings, presented using tables, graphs and statistical tools. Conclusions from the demonstrated correlations of quantitative data with social, economic and environmental factors became the basis for the students' conceptual assumptions. The selected innovative façade designs presented in the article demonstrate a variety of solutions for modern modular systems which protect buildings from excessive sun exposure, help insulation resist external factors, generate energy, ventilate buildings, use pressure differences, collect water, purify air, protect fauna, etc. As a result, the developed concepts may be indicative of a contemporary