Abstract
Recent empirical investigations have indicated that the majority of occupants in office buildings would appreciate contact with the external environment, especially in cities where the climate is mild for part of the year. Supported by the possibilities of adaptive thermal models, the design of naturally ventilated buildings has been elaborated since the decade of 1990s. More communal areas rather than private ones are demanded due to the importance of social interaction and knowledge transfer among employees. In this context, this paper investigates the possibility of daylight and thermal comfort in naturally ventilated working environments, located in cities of mild climatic conditions, by redefining the parameters of a façade’s design and exploring coupling strategies with the outdoors. For this purpose, the city of Bogotá (Latitude 4°7′ N), in Colombia, a place with great potential for passive strategies, is taken as the geographic context of this research, which is supported by fieldwork with occupants of 37 office buildings and analytical work. The survey revealed that being close to a window is valued by the majority. Furthermore, 50% would like to have informal areas and outdoor spaces attached to their working environments. In additithe analytical studies showed how the combination of a set of environmental design strategies, including a schedule for coupling and decoupling of indoor spaces with the outdoors and a variation of occupancy density, made thermal comfort possible in free running working spaces in Bogotá.
Highlights
Since the 1990s, the growing dependency of office buildings on air conditioning systems for the cooling of internal spaces has been presented as one of the main reasons that classify the building sector as the most polluted of a country’s economy, since in global terms, the electricity demand for such an end-use has been associated with growing levels of CO2 emissions [1]
In the case of commercial buildings, while the “business as usual scenario” shows an alarming growth in energy demand and consequent CO2 emissions coming from the building sector, especially in the warm region of the globe where urbanization is increasing, the potential for energy saving in buildings is significant, given the fact that internal spaces of the conventional office building rely on air conditioning and artificial lighting during the entire occupational period
The economic formula of the conventional model is changed, affecting indicators such as the efficiency of space and the relation of façade to floor area, to improve the environmental quality of internal spaces, as identified by Gonçalves [15]. In this context of design and cultural change, this paper investigates the possibility of daylight and thermal comfort in naturally ventilated working environments, located in cities of mild climatic conditions
Summary
Since the 1990s, the growing dependency of office buildings on air conditioning systems for the cooling of internal spaces has been presented as one of the main reasons that classify the building sector as the most polluted of a country’s economy, since in global terms, the electricity demand for such an end-use has been associated with growing levels of CO2 emissions [1]. The economic formula of the conventional model is changed, affecting indicators such as the efficiency of space and the relation of façade to floor area, to improve the environmental quality of internal spaces, as identified by Gonçalves [15] In this context of design and cultural change, this paper investigates the possibility of daylight and thermal comfort in naturally ventilated working environments, located in cities of mild climatic conditions. For this purpose, the city of Bogotá (Latitude 4°7′ N), in Colombia, the fastest growing city in South America and a place of great potential for passive strategies, was taken as the geographic context for the research, encompassing fieldwork with occupants of a sample office buildings and analytical studies that looked at the benefits of daylight and the thermal performance of working spaces in office buildings. In the second stage of the research, parametric studies of thermal and daylight performance of different façade strategies were carried out with computer simulations, in order to verify the possible impact of climate and orientation on the environmental performance of typical office buildings in Bogotá
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