Outdoor Comfort in Low-Income Housing Design

This paper presents a thermal comfort analysis in outdoor spaces of low-income housing projects in Londrina city, Brazil. The objective is to improve the identification of client requirements in the design development process, in order to satisfy thermal comfort requisites of low-income housing users. It has been proved that human settlements quality is intimately linked with thermal comfort and users’ well-being, and for this reason, it is necessary to establish requirements to improve the quality of outdoor spaces, which can also be parameters for new designs. Based on a case study in a house-building project, the research method consists of assessing the qualitative effects of design features that modify sun and wind exposure conditions. Simultaneously, a users’ thermal perception evaluation in outdoor spaces was conducted, through a questionnaire. Finally, this paper presents a comparison between results of user perception and qualitative analysis in outdoor spaces, identifying, analyzing and prioritizing the final client thermal requirements. Based on the results from this research, the authors propose a set of climatic guidelines to guide the design development process of low-income housing, aiming to attend the users thermal comfort requirements.