Applying adaptive principles: Developing guidance for planning practice
Runa Tabea HellwigDespoina TeliMarcel SchweikerJoon Ho ChoiMeng-Chieh LeeRodrigo MoraRajan RawalZhaojun WangFarah Al‐Atrash
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One of the major challenges of building industry today is to provide indoor spaces allowing the occupants to make themselves comfortable while achieving low energy consumption. Considering the observed increasing temperatures and a more extreme climate, this becomes even more urgent and difficult to accomplish. It is therefore necessary to rely on approaches than contribute to sustainable building design, such as the adaptive approach to thermal comfort which postulates that people are not passive recipients of their environment but adapt behaviourally, physiologically and psychologically. The concept of adaptive thermal comfort was formulated many decades ago and has been validated in numerous field studies. Temperature thresholds based on adaptive models have been included in international and national standards. However, the overall understanding of how to translate the adaptive principles into design practice and concepts for operating buildings is still limited. Subtask B of IEA Annex 69 addresses this gap: “Strategy and practice of adaptive thermal comfort in low energy buildings”. The subtask aims to develop guidelines for low energy buildings that include the principle of adaptive comfort. This paper discusses the challenges and gaps identified in using the principles of adaptive thermal comfort in building design and operation and outlines the contents of the imminent guideline.Keywords:
Adaptive Management
Building Design
Adaptive strategies
Building science
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Today’s society needs to face challenging targets relating to environment and energy efficiency, and therefore the development of efficient facade systems is essential. Innovative concepts such as Adaptive Building Facades might play a role in the near future, as their dynamic behaviour could optimise the performance of a building. For their successful development, a balance between sophistication and benefit is necessary and the implementation of Smart and Multifunctional Materials in building envelopes could be the key, as they have the ability to repeatedly and reversibly change some of their functions, features, or behaviours over time in response to environmental conditions. However, these materials were predominantly developed for use in other fields, and there is a lack of specific technical information to evaluate their usefulness in facade engineering. The aim of this paper is to collect the critical information about promising responsive materials for use in the design of Adaptive Facades, in order to help designers and technicians in decision-making processes and to scope possible future applications in facades. Investigated materials were analysed from the Building Science standpoint; their weaknesses and threats in the built environment were highlighted, and their technical feasibility was examined through the study of their availability in the current market.
Facade
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Sophistication
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Human Dimension
Consumption
Building Automation
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The need for proper consideration of energy-related performance aspects during building design has been identified since the energy crises of the 1970s. However, energy performance is still considered in a very small fraction of building projects, mainly because proper consideration is very expensive. It requires the use of computational software tools, which are not easy to learn and are time-consuming to use. Several attempts have been made to facilitate the use of energy simulation tools, but none has brought a significant increase in the consideration of energy performance. Energy related performance criteria are still considered only in a small fraction of buildings and, in most cases, after most of the building design is complete. This paper is focused on the main barriers in properly considering energy-related performance aspects in building decisions, which range from sociopolitical, to technical. The paper includes consideration of issues related to the general interest of the building industry in energy performance and environmental impact, current practice trends, modeling capabilities and performance of tools, compatibility of computational models and availability of data. Finally, a strategy for government-industry collaboration towards removing the barriers is presented, along with the main issues that need to be resolved towards potential implementation.
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Performance‐based building codes are being developed and promulgated around the world. Concurrently, performance‐based analysis and design approaches are being used in a number of disciplines, including structural, mechanical, and fire protection engineering. The performance‐based building regulatory and design environment promises great opportunities for engineers and designers to innovate and to apply analytical tools and methods to design safe, efficient, cost‐effective, and aesthetically pleasing buildings. However, for regulators and enforcement officials, performance‐based approaches are often met with skepticism and concern, as the desired performance is not always well defined and agreed, the perceived certainty associated with compliance with prescriptive design requirements is no longer assured, and there is concern that the data, tools, and methods – necessary to assure that performance‐based designed buildings achieve the levels of performance and risk deemed tolerable to society – are lacking. To address these concerns, risk‐informed performance‐based approaches are being explored, with the aim to better identify and connect tolerable levels of risk, performance expectations, and design criteria for different aspects of building design. Risk‐informed performance‐based approaches being considered in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA are discussed.
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Building Design
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Generally, building is a structure that provides basic shelter for the humans to conduct general activities. In common prose, the purpose of buildings is to provide humans a comfortable working and living space and protected from the extremes of climate. However, a building usage is depends on the lifespan and the change of rate effected on their impact on efficiency of use. Hence, more attention needs to be emphasized on the performance of buildings as the changes are not static over time. This paper highlights the concept and requirements in evaluating building performance. Exploration on the concept of building performance is also addressed on the purposes of building performance and the link of performance towards the end-users and incorporating their feedback. It concludes that obtaining users’ feedback is vital in building performance and the requirements of assessment must outline the performance criteria and mandates in such building.
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Buildings often do not perform as well in practice as expected during pre-design planning, nor as intended at the design stage, nor even as measured during commissioning and maintenance operations. While this statement is generally considered to be true, it is difficult to quantify the impacts and long-term economic implications of a building in which performance does not meet expectations. This leads to a building process that is devoid of quantitative feedback that could be used to detect and correct problems both in an individual building and in the building process itself. A key element in this situation is the lack of a standardized method for documenting and communicating information about the intended and actual performance of a building. This deficiency leads to several shortcomings in the life-cycle management of building information. Planners have no means of clearly specifying their expectations. Designers do not concisely document their design intent. Commissioning personnel have no standardized method for documenting the results of performance testing. Post-occupancy building performance cannot readily be compared to expectations in an attempt to evaluate and improve design and operation decisions. Lastly, without quantification of the magnitude of performance problems it is difficult to motivate building process participants to alter their current practice. This document describes an information management concept and a prototype tool based on this concept that has been developed to address this situation. The Building Life-cycle Information System (BLISS) has been designed to manage a wide range of building related information across the life cycle of a building project. Metracker is a prototype implementation of BLISS based on the International Alliance for Interoperability's (IAI) Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). The IFC is an evolving data model under development by a variety of architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry firms and organizations (IAI, 2001). Metracker has been developed to demonstrate and explore the process of tracking performance metrics across the building life cycle.
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Efficient daylighting and solar control strategies can have a tremendous impact on energy use. But any savings can only be effective if one also carefully accounts for our comfort, well-being and health criteria. This talk will explore current research efforts at the interface between architecture and building technology, with a focus on the integration of building performance in design especially as far as daylighting and passive solar strategies are concerned. We need more efforts to provide building designers with the means necessary to assess critical parameters in a successful design and efficiently combine qualitative and quantitative criteria in the solution search process. This must be approached from two perspectives: from what we have and from what we need. We of course must analyse the resources available to work with (i.e. the building’s environment whether natural and/or built, its localisation, climate etc) and process this information to inform us about how the building should respond to it; but first, we have to identify the needs of the building’s occupants, to determine whether and how these can be met. Taking the perspective of ongoing research in these fields, this talk will more specifically explore the impact of natural lighting contributions on occupants well-being, notably from their health and biological clock perspective, as well as the perceived visual and thermal comfort, which are considerations that should be at the heart of human acceptable habitats whether on earth or in enclosed conditions further away. The recurring questions one has to address in any of these contexts is how to best balance the ressources we have available (solar radiation, energy, climate, natural or built surroundings) to fulfill, at minimum and beyond, the occupants’ needs.
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