background: many studies have been conducted to assess the indoor air quality (iaq) of buildings throughout the world because it is closely related to comfort, safety and work productivity of occupants. however, there is still lack of available literature about iaq in tropical buildings that apply radiant cooling systems in conditioning the indoor air. methods: this paper reports the results ob...

Despite the significant progress observed over the last decades, the European building stock still consumes significant amounts of energy (39% of the total final energy), whilst it does not always provide the conditions required for occupants’ well-being and thermal comfort sensation. In order to achieve the goal of nearly or even zero energy buildings, a deep refurbishment of the building stoc...

One of the most important methods of saving energy and providing indoor comfort conditions of buildings is the careful design of the façades. A “double skin glass façade” is optimally one of the best options that control the heat interaction between indoor and outdoor spaces. Two kinds of heating energy is usually transmitted through exterior envelope “conduction” and “radiation”. Double skin g...

The focus on the needs and drives for adaptation of the building automatically leads to changing needs and demands of the occupants of the building. Building should really take care of its occupants and show adaptable behaviour and reaction to the changing outdoor environment during the day. Design for adaptability should start with the occupants needs for comfort and indoor air quality. These ...

Thermal comfort of building occupants is a major criterion in evaluating the performance of building systems. It is also a dominant factor in designing and optimizing building’s operation. However, existing thermal comfort models, such as Finger’s model currently adopted by ASHRAE Standard 55, rely on factors that require bulky and expensive equipment to measure. This paper attempts to take a r...

There is a growing need to increase the performance of the built environment through a combination of improved design, retrofitting of existing structures, and behavioral and policy change. Increased performance includes decreasing construction and operational costs, improving efficiency, reducing energy consumption and overall carbon footprint, and increasing the health, safety, and comfort of...

The need of building occupants for ventilation has been recognized many centuries ago; however, since the early 1970s, ventilation systems for buildings and transport systems have considerably evolved. This was invigorated by researchers who demonstrated the requirements for buildings to provide comfort and good air quality indoors (e.g., Fanger, 1972; Fanger and Christensen, 1986; Fanger, 1988...

Indoor air quality (IAQ) in a building is a very important element to ensure the health and comfort level of the building occupants. This is because work productivity may be interrupted due to the polluted environmental condition and bad indoor air quality. Both factors may lead to bad health and physical condition and consequently to bad work performance. The study presents the understanding a...

abstract a basic aim of low energy architecture is to create a thermally comfortable internal environment for building occupants whilst consuming the least possible amount of energy. in desert countries this aim is more difficult to achieve since high ambient air temperatures create a barrier to comfort. traditional building types of these countries, such as courtyard building, have evolved to ...