Building science

This paper attempts to summarize and provide a structured perspective on transforming India’s built environment, taking stock of emerging realities attributed to climate change and sustainability (planet, people, and prosperity). While the COVID-19 pandemic provided the original backdrop to review the status of the built environment and its resilience, climate change continues to manifest as an existential threat.

While the COVID-19 pandemic provided the original backdrop to review the status of the built environment and its resilience, climate change continues to manifest as an existential threat. We attempt to summarize and provide a structured perspective on transforming India’s built environment, taking stock of emerging realities attributed to climate change and sustainability (planet, people, and prosperity).

Three interdependent, concurrent drivers, Decarbonize, Democratize, and Digitalize are essential for the required transformations in the built environment. Decarbonization aims to drop the exponentially accruing carbon footprint attributed to modern society to fundamentally restore and reset planetary systems that society is attuned to.Democratization aims to overcome deprivation and marginalization, to be inclusive of diversity in culture, geography, and aspirations in providing a healthy and resilient living environment. Digitalization could provide the ubiquitous digital connectivity and Internet of Things as the unifying fabric encompassing environmental stewardship to network, facilitate, operate, and underscore transformations across all seven sectors in the built environment, viz., residential, agriculture, administration, industry & commerce, education & research, infrastructure services, and transport and communication.

Decarbonize, Democratize and Digitalize, like in a triple helix, are intricately linked, and may be achieved through five actionable levers: Research and Development, Technology, Human Capital, Policy and Economic Investment. This structure aims to support wellness and resilience in the built environment and restore planetary stability.

Wellness provides the much-needed paradigm to unify the outcomes emerging from the seven built-environment sectors. Clarity needs to emerge on the definition and assessment of wellness and sustainability, as it would apply to various activities and stakeholders, to achieve carbon neutrality. There is an imminent need for restoring ecosystem services and enhancing biodiversity. Wellness as a fundamental right permeates all aspects of the built and natural environment and the planet. The built environment (urban to be specific) also needs to be reconfigured keeping in mind human scale and socio-temporal sensitivity, e.g. open spaces, pedestrian mobility, social inclusiveness, nature and recreation. In addition to equitable and affordable access to a healthy living environment, meeting inter-generational aspirations is crucial.

This pa has taken stock of current status and challenges in the built environment while also identifying multi-sectoral recommendations at the building, community and regional/national scales. Each of the three drivers has been articulated in detail, highlighting challenges and opportunities in terms of market barriers, policy and institutional challenges, and societal saliency.

Decarbonization approaches include reduction in embodied and operational carbon and circularity of materials, products and spaces. Democratization approaches include provision of inclusive, healthier built environments and communities, resilience to unprecedented health and climate risks, and reinforcing positive sustainable behavior. Digitalization approaches include all stages of building lifecycle, community-scale systems, and unlocking region-specific transformations. This involves a national computing and networking infrastructure, archiving and revival of traditional knowledge, and adoption of machine learning and artificial intelligence based analytics for the built environment.

At the UN Climate Change Conference 2021, India announced a target of net zero emissions by 2070. India will reduce its projected Carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes and the carbon intensity of its economy by 45% by 2030. In order to approach, and as we believe, surpass this target, it is absolutely critical to transform the built environment that constitutes nearly 40% of global energy-related GHG emissions. While other energy sectors such as centralized renewables may require significant infrastructure change and investment, building technologies can create quick climate wins. In India where half of the buildings and homes that will be standing in 2050 have yet to be built, but once built will last 50-100 years, this is a historic opportunity. It is also a contrast to decarbonizing sectors such as transport where the assets are short lived. The built environment thereby lends itself to democratization and faster adoption as one of the most cost effective and deep carbon abatement wedges while being the human theater for wellness and health.

Ten key considerations have been identified along the three drivers with a vision of a zero-carbon built environment promoting digitally-enabled equitable wellness and resilience for all.

The existence of old houses as folk's houses in urban villages or kampong in Surabaya City that are still sustainable can be a precedent for today's architecture. Kampung with residential neighborhoods and dense urban village communities with middle to lower socio-economic strata have produced many distinctive architectural styles of houses. Several studies have shown that kampung's housing has high adaptability to urban developments. A comprehensive review of adaptation, one of which is a bioclimatic adaptation, where the performance of the house building is influenced by the relationship of living organisms, climate, and shape of the building. Bioclimatic adaptation as an architectural strategy is based on comfort-based rationale and low energy to create buildings with better thermal performance. Then how does the thermal performance of old houses as cultural products in the kampung contribute to sustainable thermal comfort? For this reason, the development of a response surface methodology is used as a technique to assess building performance in a quantitative bioclimatic context to complement the qualitative description. Data or information about facts in the field of old houses were obtained from observing the physical traces of the building and interviews with the occupants of the house. Analysis with the response surface methodology will show building optimization in achieving thermal comfort with energy efficiency efforts in old houses in Kampung Peneleh, Surabaya City with various levels depending on the architectural style of the building (Javanese House, Indische House, Yankee House, Modern House). The good thermal performance of old houses can be a precedent in the bioclimatic architectural design of houses in dense settlements such as in urban villages.
KEYWORDS: Old House, Kampung, Bioclimatic Adaptation, Thermal Performance, Response Surface Methodology

Selection of prime mover type was investigated for use in combined cooling, heat and power systems.
Selection was determined from comparison of performance criteria for economic, energy and emissions
savings. Simulations were run for three different types of prime movers in one climate zone and compared
to a reference case with a typical separate heating and power system in the same climate zone. A
hybrid load following method was implemented, with a suggested improvement. Performance parameters
were compared and results indicated emissions and energy savings for all three prime movers.
The prime mover types were reciprocating internal combustion engine (ICE), micro-turbine and phosphoric
acid fuel cell. The climate zone was chosen to be a cold, humid climate represented by Chicago, IL.
Economic savings were seen for both the ICE and micro-turbines. Emissions savings for carbon, nitrogenoxides
and methane, for all three types, were greater than 9%, 12%, and 13%, respectively. Primary energy
consumption savings for all three were greater than 8%.

ABSTRACT: The built form of the traditional Indonesian house is considered to be a prime example of environmental design response to regional climate conditions. Recently, in general, modern small/medium housing types in Indonesia has not followed the same design principles. In comparison with their traditional counterparts, they are of a relatively heavyweight construction; they often suffer from low levels of natural ventilation. The indoor environmental conditions of the modern houses are, generally considered thermally unsatisfactory. This study is concerning thermal sensation evaluation for both, traditional types and modern style of housing in Indonesia. The ten traditional houses of Minahasa (North Sulawesi Province) and the ten modern style houses have been taken as house samples. 60 adults who were living in these houses have been taken as subject samples. Comparisons of thermal sensation response from the residents of these two types of housing may allow us in giving recommendations of housing construction quality and policy. The methods used in this research are numerical simulation (calculation of building heat transfer and thermal comfort) and field studies (questionnaires for thermal sensation and thermal environment measurement). Some of the results show that the respondents may feel thermally comfortable in an enclosure environment with a low air velocity where air temperature is in maximum of 29°C, with air humidity is about 60 %. By simulation, these climatic environments give a slightly uncomfortable condition, where the DISC scales are about 1 to 1.5. Therefore, there is a different about 1 scale between theoretical approach and field observation. 

Keywords: Traditional Architecture, Tropical Humid, Thermal Comfort

A Best Academic Paper at the Integral European Conference, this paper presents an integrally‐informed, Wilber‐influenced approach to expanding the study of occupant behaviour beyond building science. Poorly understood occupants are a main reason why predicted and actual building energy performance deviate significantly. Existing research focuses on a useful but limited objective science and engineering approach. This research project develops an integral methodology for transdisciplinary inquiry of occupants' experience and action in architectural space, with regard to their experience of nature and natural forces. Each of four major perspectives has two research questions; each question, a method from architectural design, building science, cultural theory, place phenomenology or social psychology. Our hypothesis is that spatial‐temporal patterns can serve as an integrating frame among diverse perspectives. We conclude with proposing conceptual frames for future research into architectural inhabitation from sixteen prospects generated from four levels of complexity in each of four primary perspectives.

Hong Kong's building density is one of the highest in the world. Since ventilation is a key element in sustainable and environmental design, there is a need to evaluate local wind environments of high dense cities such as Hong Kong. In recent years non-standard curvilinear residential buildings that don't follow conventional rectilinear block structures are becoming increasingly more popular. Though various studies of ventilation conditions of conventionally design buildings have been made, research of non-standard curvilinear building layouts is still limited. Previous research mainly explored rectilinear block-shaped layouts that typically cause a so called 'Wall-Effect' by blocking adequate ventilation on street-and mid-levels around buildings. Our paper presents and summarizes the analysis of airflow and ventilation of non-standard curvilinear buildings based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The Flow Simulation of Solidworks has been used as our analysis software tools. Its technology is based upon the use of Cartesian-based meshes and solving the Navier-Stokes equations. Nonstandard and curvilinear shaped building arrangements are categorized into various groups and analyzed in respect to their performance of ventilation on street and mid-levels using a case study of high rise buildings in Sha Tin, Hong Kong. Hong Kong's climate is subtropical warm and humid in summer, subsequently a higher ventilation is needed and building design has to accommodate good airflow around the buildings. Our findings show that curvilinear buildings lead to a more favourable ventilation environment since they have a smaller wind resistance. Non-standard curvilinear designs perform better in terms of general ventilation since the airflow around the buildings is faster and less turbulent. Our simulations present that convex-shaped buildings have a better overall wind environment than concave-shaped ones. We conclude our paper with a classification of various nonstandard curvilinear buildings that offer a general better airflow and ventilation due to their shape. This classification allows designer to understand quickly wind resistance, airflow, and turbulences that a non-standard curvilinear design has on the immediate environment.

The ancient house architecture in Kampong's Surabaya is one of the folk architecture creations in urban areas that grow and follow dynamics of urban development. In some areas in this city, this architecture is still sustainable for residents' living space, especially for lower and middle class. This sustainable happens because of building adaptation and occupant's adaptation. Bioclimatic adaptation can be one of the comprehensive design approaches which considers the relationship between architecture, climate, biology, technology, in order to obtain comfort and energy efficiency. Therefore, the kampong has a high adaptability to development of the city, so that, it can adjust to future conditions efficiently. Cultures living in kampong require an appropriate strategy in associating with various limitations. However, limitation does not make a typical house in kampong uncomfortable and unliveable. It seems that typical ancient house in Surabaya City is dominantly influenced by architectural traditions of Javanese, Colonial, and Modern building. The present study is designed to describe the form and performance of ancient houses in context with bioclimatic adaptation and also the occupant spatial interactions with the building. The data collected from observation, measurement, and questionnaire that taken from several alley of Kampong Peneleh, Surabaya. Then the data was analysing to explain the performance and interaction between the building and its occupant that creates typical architecture houses and its transformation. Result of the study showed that bioclimatic adaptation as a design strategy allowed unique form architecture, climate responsive and environmentally friendly. Facade technique and building envelops, eco-friendly building materials, vegetation, water elements and saving energy were appropriate technologies to apply.
Keywords: bioclimatic adaptation, typical, ancient house, Kampong’s Surabaya