Bioclimatic design strategies: A guideline to enhance human thermal comfort in humid climate

Abstract Architectural design based on bioclimatic features has long been of interest to many designers. Exploiting climate indicators and the use of passive strategies are among the central principles of this design approach. The main purpose of the present study is to provide bioclimatic design strategies to enhance the human thermal comfort in the humid climate zones based on Cfa Koppen climate classification. This study focused on to improve indoor thermal comfort with climate indicators. The eight cities studied include Rasht (Iran), Durban (South Africa), Tokyo (Japan), Kutaisi (Georgia), Houston (United States), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Brisbane (Queensland) and Trieste (Italy) according to similarities in the climatic zones and the most important criteria climates such as humidity and rainfall were selected all around the world. Hereafter, the city of Rasht was directly investigated as a case study. In this way at first, the climatic data of Rasht collected. Then it analyzed concerning the Givoni Bioclimatic Chart and Mahoney Table to determine the appropriate bioclimatic design strategies. In the following, these strategies plotted from the Givoni chart and the Mahoney table and the design recommendations provided as diagrams related to the strategies and debated separately. In the end, the executive function of the strategies regarding the relations between the zones of Givoni bioclimatic chart and months of the year, and also the strategies have discussed the indicators of the Mahoney table as well. The extensive findings described in this paper allowed us to conclude that certain bioclimatic design strategies that have been adopted in specific cities and countries could be exported to other zones with similar climates because they were proven to be useful functional architectural design strategies that resulted to improve human indoor thermal comfort.