Building Science 1 / Portfolio
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Building Science 1 is an introduction to the factors that affect the thermal performance of buildings. This module is extremely important in aiding us as students to create acceptable designs which are both sustainable and comfortable.
The thermal performance of a building refers to the process of modeling the energy transfer between a building and its surroundings. It enables one to determine the effectiveness of the design of a building and help in evolving improved designs for realizing energy efficient buildings with comfortable indoor conditions.
Clients would like to know how much energy might be saved, or the temperature reduced to justify any additional expense or design change. Architects too need to know the relative performance of buildings to choose a suitable alternative. Thus, knowledge of the methods of estimating the performance of buildings is essential to the design of passive solar buildings.
Case Study: Proposing Passive Building Design Strategies / 01
For this project, we are required to choose a building that would showcase the basic building design for thermal comfort. After that, we are to propose a passive design and elaborate the principles, strategies and details needed to perform best in tropical climate in order to achieve thermal comfort in this building.
In a group of six, the building that we have chosen is the Setia Alam Welcome Centre, located in Shah Alam. Through several visits to this building, we have recorded and wisely studied the existing conditions that directly affected by the basic building design, such as climatic data, wind rose, average temperature, precipitation, and sun path.
We have proposed three passive designs, including shading devices, roof spray system, and use of plantation. These designs are well-explained through concept photos, visuals and diagrams, and most importantly their effects and importance to attain thermal comfort. Heat gain calculations before and after these designs were applied are also conducted and tabulated to prove our proposed strategies can achieve thermal comfort by complying with MS 1525:2007.
Upon completion of this project, we have truly understood what is thermal comfort and how to identify the environmental conditions related to the site conditions. Besides, we are now able to explain the effects of the sun on the thermal performance in this building. Lastly, we also manage to justify the effect of insulation, thermal mass, and air movement on the building’s thermal performance.