Abstract
Climate change will bring changes to our living conditions, particularly in urban areas. Climate-responsive design strategies through courtyards can help to moderate temperatures and reduce the thermal stress of its occupants. Thermal response inside courtyard is affected not only by its morphological composition but also by subjective factors. Thus, standardized thermal scales may not reflect the stress of the occupants. This study investigated the impact on thermal attenuation provided by a courtyard located in a tropical climate under extreme cold and hot synoptic conditions by means of local thermal sensation scales. Microclimatic variables were monitored, simultaneously with the application of a thermal comfort questionnaire, by using weather stations installed outside and inside the courtyard. The Modified Physiological Equivalent Temperature Index (mPET) was utilized to predict the heat stress. Calibration was conducted using linear regression to attribute particular thermal sensation votes to correspondent mPET values. It was found that thermal sensation can be affected by factors such as psychological, behavioral, and physiological. The courtyard’s form provides a passive cooling effect, stabilizing interior thermal sensation, with attenuation peaks of 6.4 °C on a cold day and 5.0 °C on a hot day. Courtyards are an alternative passive strategy to improve thermal ambience in tropical climate, counterbalancing climate change.
Highlights
A courtyard is defined as an open space surrounded by buildings which plays a role in providing natural lighting, ventilation, and shading for internal building environments
When considering the parameters established by the World Health Organization (WHO), the BMI analysis indicated that overweight people predominated over healthy people in the sample, indicating an overweight trend, previously reported for the Brazilian population [32]
A behavioral aspect observed in the region indicates that the local population use lower cloth insulation during cold days than those who live in Europe, which is attributed to the absence of adequate clothing insulation for cold stress conditions, since interviewees wore overlapping light clothing during the field campaign [13]
Summary
A courtyard is defined as an open space surrounded by buildings which plays a role in providing natural lighting, ventilation, and shading for internal building environments. Previous research has addressed the direct relationship between humans, architecture, and the environment, emphasizing the importance of the relationship between the internal and external spaces of buildings. This relationship is fundamental to improve the quality of life for users through a more sustainable architecture [1]. Courtyards are an ancient architectural feature traditionally found in hot and dry climates, such as in the desert They have been applied to other regions, comprising Mediterranean, cold, hot, and humid climates [2,3,4,5,6,7], and have been widely used in buildings in Asian and European countries, as well as in North Africa, China, and Latin America [6]. In Brazil, this type of construction is present in several historical buildings, brought by European colonizers [8], dwellings with courtyards are not part of the Luso-Brazilian tradition and rarely used in contemporary projects due to lack of diffusion about their advantages in the country, in particular, their passive climate control capacity
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