Beyond energy savings: Investigating the co-benefits of heat resilient architecture

Abstract

Heat is a growing concern in cities around the word, especially in the face of climate change. Because buildings are an important component of the built environment vis-à-vis both energy use and heat resiliency in cities, we explored their climate mitigation and adaptation potential. Specifically, we investigated how design decisions interact with regard to three heat-related factors—namely, energy use/CO2 emissions, passive survivability, and heat rejection to the urban climate. We selected an archetypical building as our test case, created various design permutations, and used whole-building simulations to analyze their performance. Our simulations show that permutations of the building with a smaller carbon footprint also emit less heat to ambient air and had a better passive survivability. However, we also noted potential trade-offs (e.g., where ventilation is inadequate, increasing insulation levels for energy efficiency may hurt passive survivability). Based on our findings, we argue that, at least at a policy level, it is imperative to take advantage of the synergies, and their collective benefits. Moreover, building regulations or incentive programs should look beyond energy as the sole performance metric of interest and consider passive survivability as well as thermal interactions with urban climate.