Abstract
Despite the global call for a paradigm shift towards new environmentally conscious urban planning, little has changed in practice, especially in hot climatic regions. This paper helps bridge this gap by introducing an automated parametric workflow for performance driven urban design. The methodology was tested here in the climatic and urban Mediterranean context consists of a parametric typological analysis, automated through Grasshopper with a total of 1920 iterations. For each iteration the performative effects of both building (i.e. typology, window to wall ratio and glazing properties) and urban design parameters (i.e. distance between buildings, floor area ratio and the orientation) were evaluated for residential and office building uses. The performance metrics - monthly/hourly energy load match and spatial daylight autonomy - were calculated using Energyplus and Radiance, respectively, and recorded for each iteration. The main results indicate substantial performative differences between typologies under different design and density scenarios; the correlation between the shape factor and the energy load match index as well as the benefits of the courtyard typology in terms of energy balance, with its challenging daylight performance, were established. These results demonstrate the potential of this workflow to highlight the design trade-offs between form and environmental performance considerations by designers and thus provide a new way to bridge the performative gap between buildings and their urban surroundings. Its application should help designers and policy makers contextualize nearly zero energy block concepts as well as define new criteria and goals.
Highlights
The October 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for unprecedented urban adaptation as well as an energy transition to net zero carbon by 2050 to keep the global average temperature rise below 1.5 °C [1]
The sections show the potential of our methodology to be applied in the following analytical explorations: a quantitative zero energy buildings' (ZEB) potential evaluation of different urban forms in different density scenarios; the trade-off between urban and building-scale design parameters to achieve a higher energy balance; the trade-off between energy balance and daylight considerations; as well as the temporal synchronization quality of the balance between energy supply and demand
As part of the wider task to explore the correlation between urban form and environmental performance, this paper presented a methodology for evaluating the impact of building and urban-scale design parameters on environmental performance, focusing on the hot and dry climatic Mediterranean context
Summary
The October 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for unprecedented urban adaptation as well as an energy transition to net zero carbon by 2050 to keep the global average temperature rise below 1.5 °C [1]. Research is still scant on the possible optimization of an urban form that corresponds to the ZEB challenge, and rarely goes beyond energy performance considerations to other aspects of environmental quality (e.g. indoor visual comfort, outdoor thermal comfort). To begin to address this knowledge gap, this paper offers a novel method for integrating urban environmental qualities and energy balance considerations in early design phases of nearly zero energy urban blocks. Our workflow explores the tradeoffs between urban form, energy balance, and daylight performance in the context of hot and dry Mediterranean climates
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