Heitor da Costa Silva

Emphasis on daylight is given to non-domestic buildings because in such buildings the specificity of the activities or the high levels of illumination demand a more careful control on daylighting examined for design purposes. Clearly energy saving in that situation is one of the reasons for that emphasis. This paper deals with light coming into the rooms through the window providing natural light once the window is considered the only system that provides and controls light flux and distribution. Rooms can be classified according to their occupancy and use, and then many different activities requiring different illumination levels can be
developed in the same space. Room's classification is the first step to establish the ratio window to the floor area for daylight purposes. Therefore the aim of the present work is to investigate window’s characteristics as a mean to assess daylighting. Windows’ parameters were taken up to calculate daylighting for 12.00m² rooms. The simulated cases were accessed varying windows position, shape, size and geometry, maintaining in all cases 3.60m² area. This methodology can be applied in architectural education aiming students’ comprehension about users’ comfort and energy savings. ECOTECT and Radiance
softwares were used to simulate the proposed windows’ parameters.

The climate data information available for architectural design variables is either derived from climatology science or from empirical knowledge domain. From this stand point of view, one can ask: - is it the architectural practice aware of this? This paper is about the most needed information that architects should be aware of whenever climate affects one architectural object, and it is always needed. It is a mater of concern, for architectural design purposes, the recognition of climate elements that should be tackled to avoid unnecessary energy waste and human discomfort in the built environment, this because of both; misleading information available and architects ignorance on the matter. The paper is concerned with the temperature and the humidity as the main climatic elements that affect comfort and energy savings. It is suggested a climate classification based the psychrometric chart to assess those variables. The work is aimed to students and professionals working with the d...

Energy consumption of buildings is an important concern of countries around the world. Various Brazilian legislations regulate certain elements of the construction's envelope to obtain such efficiency. To analyze the influence of this existing legislation in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, on the thermal indoor comfort of office buildings, 12 architectonical elements are extracted from two existing and one future legislation in order to build a base model and its variations. Thermal simulations were executed regarding 5 different values for each element and 4 solar orientations for each of the simulated values. The methodology, tools and models are described in detail. The authors use the obtained results to show that the influence of the legislations' prescriptions on the thermal comfort is considerable and that the lack of definitions with respect to solar orientation and shading are allowing certain uncomfortable edification.