Early Stage Optimization Towards a Climate-responsive Design

The world is in a climatic crisis. Extreme weather events are stronger and more frequent than ever before, exacerbated by human induced CO2 from energy production and the built environment. Only 5% of world energy is produced by renewable energy sources, presenting an enormous gap between sustainability and greenhouse gas emitting practices....

Multi-functional Facade Module: for different climate conditions

The building sector is responsible for more than one third of resource consumption globally. Concerning the new construction, new regulations have been set, which impose that by 2020 all new buildings constructed within the EU should reach nearly zero-energy levels. The building envelope plays a strategic role in the energy and environmental...

Towards urban energy transition: How climate-responsive and energy-active urban design can facilitate the transition

The subject of this graduation project is the energy transition within urban environments. This is pursued through, firstly, gaining an understanding of the fossil dependency and how this has affected our cities and practices. In order to overturn this effect and open the way for the urban energy transition, urban design needs to become more...

Climate responsive facade system with translucent PCM

The European Union has approved the Energy Performance of Building Directive, requesting all new building to be near Zero Energy by 2020. This has created challenges and opportunities in the building sector, encouraging the creation of new solutions, which are both energy efficient and environmental friendly. Between many possible explored...

The Haitian Dream: Increasing the economic, social and environmental resilience of the hot and humid, high density urban Haitian neighbourhood by the implementation of climate responsive design

The event of the earthquake on January 12 2010 in Haiti has caused in a disaster which has shocked the world. It resulted in an estimated amount of 250.000 casualties and left over 1.000.000 people homeless. From these numbers it is clear that Haiti needs to become more resilient to hazards to prevent in a future repetition of this disaster. A...