Green buildings and design for adaptation: strategies for renovation of the built environment

The recent EU Directives 2010/31 and 2012/27 provide standards of nearly zero energy buildings for new constructions, aiming at a better quality of the built environment through the adoption of high-performance solutions. In the near future, cities are expected to be the main engine of development while bearing the impact of population growth: new challenges such as increasing energy efficiency, reducing maintenance costs of buildings and infrastructures, facing the effects of climate change and adjusting on-going and future impacts, require smart and sustainable approaches. To improve the capability of adaptation to dynamics of transformation, buildings and districts have to increase their resilience, assumed as ‘the capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance’ (Wilson A., Building Resilience in Boston, Boston Society of Architects, 2013). This paper describes the research methodology, developed by the Department of Architecture, a research unit of Technology for Architecture, to perform the assessment of resilience of existing buildings, as well as the outcomes of its application within Bologna urban context. This methodology focuses on the design for adaptation of social housing buildings, aiming at predicting their expected main impacts (energy consumption, emissions, efficiency, urban quality and environmental sustainability) and at developing models for renovation

Semantic Interior Mapology: A Toolbox For Indoor Scene Description From Architectural Floor Plans

We introduce the Semantic Interior Mapology (SIM) toolbox for the conversion of a floor plan and its room contents (such as furnitures) to a vectorized form. The toolbox is composed of the Map Conversion toolkit and the Map Population toolkit. The Map Conversion toolkit allows one to quickly trace the layout of a floor plan, and to generate a GeoJSON file that can be rendered in 3D using web applications such as Mapbox. The Map Population toolkit takes the 3D scan of a room in the building (acquired from an RGB-D camera), and, through a semi-automatic process, populates individual objects of interest with a correct dimension and position in the GeoJSON representation of the building. SIM is easy to use and produces accurate results even in the case of complex building layouts.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figure

The Impact of Occupant Behaviour on Energy Consumption at Resi-dential Buildings

xiii, 63 p.Buildings are responsible for 40 percent of energy consumption in cities and cities are responsible for 60 to 80 percent of the total energy consumption in the world. Besides energy consumption in the industrial market which has complex dynamics to investigate, residential buildings have a big piece of the pie in this share. To avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change and depletion of sources, energy demand and correspondingly energy consumption in cities should be controlled immediately by every energy con-sumer. In this matter, the control of energy demand depends principally on the actions of the users. Evaluating the social science behind energy consumption is not the study area of this research but the impact of adaptive behaviours to control indoor comfort are main objectives. This study goals to examine the effect of occupant behavior through Design-Builder with hypothetical and probabilistic scenarios which are configurations of Occu-pancy, Heating, Cooling, DHW, Equipment and Lighting schedules and setpoints. Three different building typologies from 3 different cities and climates` building energy performance will be analyzed through the combination of two other variables: thermal condition of the buildings and user behavior. The user behaviors are grouped into two as economic and wasteful. In the end, the comparative results of the scenarios were analyzed. The final comparison analysis confirms the assertion of the study that user behavior effects the energy demand directly proportional; wasteful occupant has the highest energy demand while the scenarios based on the Spanish technical code for energy savings has the opti-mal and economic scenarios have the lowest. The analysis of the study leads to an un-touched area of study to enlarge the scale and examine the impact of occupant behavior at low energy districts and cities to prevent the negative effects of increased urban energy consumption

Activating Communities: A Space for Inclusive Recreation in Central New York

The concept is to design a specialized sports and recreation facility for adults and children with physical disabilities. Located in the Near West Side neighborhood of Syracuse New York, this facility serves as a healthy alternative to destructive behavior that is common in this low-income area. It also becomes a fun destination for members within the community. The space facilitates current and future adapted sports teams by providing a venue for practices and tournaments. It also offers the necessary support and resources for families who are new to adapted recreation. Ultimately, this space serves as an outlet for those with physical and mobility impairments to experience the thrill of sports without limitations

Occupant-Centric Simulation-Aided Building Design Theory, Application, and Case Studies

This book promotes occupants as a focal point for the design process

Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales

Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales provides professionals with guidance on adapting the built environment to a changing climate. This edited volume brings together practitioners and researchers to discuss climate-related resilience from the building to the city scale. This book highlights North American cases that deal with issues such as climate projections, public health, adaptive capacity of vulnerable populations, and design interventions for floodplains, making the content applicable to many locations around the world. The contributors in this book discuss topics ranging from how built environment professionals respond to a changing climate, to how the building stock may need to adapt to climate change, to how resilience is currently being addressed in the design, construction, and operations communities. The purpose of this book is to provide a better understanding of climate change impacts, vulnerability, and resilience across scales of the built environment. Architects, urban designers, planners, landscape architects, and engineers will find this a useful resource for adapting buildings and cities to a changing climate

Integra House

Average housing in the UK is less affordable for rural dwellers in comparison with urban living. Fuel poverty is a related challenge, being higher in rural than urban areas. In addition to lower incomes, energy inefficiency of rural dwellings is a driver for fuel poverty. Fuel poverty is recognized in the UK as a form of social inequality and injustice. This study features application-based research that creates a single integrated construction system of the walls, roof and floor of the "Integra House" - a singular operation to create a faster, more cost-effective and thermally efficient envelope. This work is carried out through design optimization, prototyping and performance evaluation. The design used well-understood truss technology to provide the superstructure and envelope for the entire house. The prototyping included two key elements - novelty and performance testing of: a) Elemental prototypes in workshops at the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC), Glasgow, and; b) The complete prototype on-site in rural Fraserburgh, Scotland. The design proved that it is capable of reducing fuel poverty, addressing indoor air quality and making considerable reductions in capital and lifecycle costs. Most importantly, it is a fully repeatable model. The initial post-occupancy evaluation confirms that all except one of the outcomes have been met. The project was funded by the CSIC

EXTENDING A MOBILE DEVICE WITH LOW-COST 3D MODELING AND BUILDING-SCALE MAPPING CAPABILITIES, FOR APPLICATION IN ARCHITECTURE AND ARCHAEOLOGY

One of the most challenging problem in architecture is the automated construction of 3D (and 4D) digital models of cultural objects with the aim of implementing open data repositories, scientifically authenticated and responding to well accepted standards of validation, evaluation, preservation, publication, updating and dissemination. The realization of such an ambitious objective requires the adoption of special technological instruments. In this paper we plan to use portable devices (i.e. smartphones, tablets or PDAs eventually extended to wearable ones), extended with a small plug-in, for automatically extracting 3D models of single objects and building-scale mapping of the surrounding environment. At the same time, the device will provide the capability of inserting notes and observations. Where the instrument cannot be directly applied, for example for exploring the top of a complex building, we consider mounting our device, or using equivalent existing equipment, on a drone, in a modular approach for obtaining data de-facto interchangeable. The approach based on the expansion packs has the advantage of anticipating (or even promoting) future extensions of new mobile devices, when the spectrum of possible applications justify the corresponding increased costs. In order to experiment and verify this approach we plan to test it in two specific scenarios of the cultural heritage domain in which such devices seem particularly promising: Strada Nuova in Genoa and Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, both located in Italy