A Practical Guide to the New European Bauhaus Self-assessment Method and Tool

This handbook provides a complete guide to the New European Bauhaus (NEB) self-assessment method, designed to promote the three NEB dimensions, namely sustainability, beauty, and inclusiveness, in the built environment of Europe and beyond. The handbook comes together with an online tool allowing to evaluate the performance of projects and support their improvement. The online tool is seen as the basis to establish a dialogue between all involved stakeholders, and the grounds for defining minimum performance levels within the NEB framework. Advanced targets and indices are proposed to help professionals assess all aspects of the three NEB dimensions in buildings and living spaces, promote sustainable economic and financial activities, overcome local constraints, and improve the quality of life of the European citizens, indoors and outdoors, through a built environment designed to be affordable, aesthetically appealing, healthy, comfortable, and accessible for everyone, also addressing safety, functionality under hazards, adaptation to new functions. Acknowledging the complexity of a comprehensive evaluation, and understanding the variability of metrics associated with the three NEB dimensions across different project types, scales, and geographical regions, the self-assessment method is structured hierarchically to provide feedback with three interconnected assessment levels: indicator, key performance indicator, and dimension. Specifically, the method defines three spatial scales, i.e. building, neighbourhood, and urban, and delineates two project types, i.e. newbuild and renovation. Supporting the self-assessment process, the online tool aims to facilitate the user and simplify the evaluation process while upholding the method integrity and effectiveness. This handbook offers a thorough guidance on the New European Bauhaus self-assessment method and its underlying principles. It covers assessment targets, indicators, key performance indicators, evaluation methods, and measurement units. Additionally, the handbook includes illustrative examples, empowering the interested users with the knowledge necessary to perform the evaluation effectively. The handbook primarily targets professionals engaged in both the delivery phase (design, construction, and commissioning) and the operational phase (operations and maintenance). Project managers, architects, engineers, and consultants are anticipated to play an active role in gathering and generating the information needed for the self-assessment. However, various stakeholders throughout the entire building lifecycle and supply chains are also expected to participate, benefit from, and be influenced by the assessment, including product manufacturers, main and specialist contractors, policymakers, building users and the local community members directly impacted by the project outcomes. The method is not intended to foster competition or reward high-scoring projects; rather, its purpose is to drive continuous improvement in the built environment quality and align projects with the NEB objectives. Whereas users are expected to aim at the highest performance in the self-assessment, the decision of focusing more on some performance indicators rather than others is finally left each user. To emphasise the significance of a balanced performance across all three dimensions of projects, the possibility of obtaining a global performance combining the three NEB dimension scores was intentionally excluded

Environmental design solutions for existing concrete flat roofs in low-cost housing to improve passive cooling in western Mexico

The development of real estate in Mexico has largely ruled out the comfort of users that focused on economic matters and made it difficult to make substantial progress in adopting measures to improve indoor environmental quality. Current research projects in Mexico found that roof construction in low-cost housing struggles to meet the requirements of the indoor climate. Passive cooling strategies are techniques to control heat gain and heat dissipation in buildings to maximise the comfort and health of building users while minimising energy use. Passive cooling systems recognize climate conditions and utilise renewable sources of energy such as the sun and wind to provide cooling and ventilation. Therefore, this study aims to develop a green and sustainable solution for existing concrete flat roofs with no major interventions and investments to save energy. The design of a passive device was tested to assess its effectiveness to protect flat roofs from shortwave radiation and to allow for heat dissipation in Mexican buildings. The study used a quantitative approach based on experiments and simulation tests to evaluate design efficiency. The results showed that a perforated device with an opening percentage of 88% and a cavity of 0.05m between the roof and the device provided effective protection. Also, the device with blinds of 45° showed lower operative temperatures within a range of mean values between 0.8°C and 0.9°C compared to a roof with a full shade cover in the hot and humid season. However, the perforated device with blinds of 90° in black colour delivered the best performance compared to other models and recorded a mean value of 1.13°C in the hot sub-humid season. The results revealed the efficiency of the proposed device that can be observed within different geometric configurations, surface properties as well as the use of the nocturnal radiative cooling potential in blocking solar radiation in Mexican buildings

Remote Sensing and In-situ Data Analysis for the Urban Heat Island and Land Surface Temperature in the Vertical Forest area (“Bosco Verticale”), in Milan city

The trend of urbanization nowadays has caused a lot of changes that related to climate. One of the most important issues is that of Urban Heat Island (UHI) and occurs in major cities in worldwide scale. Surface urban heat island (SUHI) and canopy urban heat island (CUHI) are the most commonly studied UHI categories. The current study was held during both spring and summer period of 2021, in the city of Milan. The methodology includes in-situ measurements and remote sensing techniques. For the examination of CUHI effect, meteorological data were also acquired from a nearby meteorological station. The outcomes showed differences of in-situ measurements in terms of both air temperature (Tair) and relative humidity (RH), by 3.8 oC and by 7.6 % accordingly higher than that acquired from the meteorological station. Concerning remote sensing, the results showed that the root mean square error (RMSE) of surface temperature concerning the downscaled values from MODIS (1.000m) to Landsat8 (30m) found to be equal to 2.71 oC. On the other hand, the downscaled values from MODIS to Sentinlel-2 (10m) found to be equal to 3.42 o

Monitoring the effect of urban green areas on the heat island in Athens

The role of urban green areas in the microclimatic conditions of cities, during summer, is investigated in this paper through monitoring campaigns carried out at the National garden, at the city centre of Athens. Two types of investigations were carried out: i) a microscopic one that investigated the thermal conditions inside the Garden and the immediate surrounding urban area and ii) a macroscopic one that compared the temperature profile of the Garden with that of the greater city centre area. It was concluded that in microscopic level, the temperature profile inside the National Garden and the immediate surrounding urban area did not showed a clear evidence of the influence of the Garden and it was dependent on the characteristics of each location. In a macroscopic scale, the Garden was found cooler than the other monitored urban locations and temperature differences were mainly greater during the night, especially in streets with high building height to street width (H/W) ratio and low traffic, while in streets with high anthropogenic heat during the day, the biggest temperature differences were recorded during the day. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Investigation of the performance of a ventilated wall

The need for environmental friendly and energy efficient building design has stimulated the design of new facade technologies, including various configurations of double skin facades. This paper investigates the thermal performance of a ventilated wall, both for heating and cooling. A thermal analysis was carried out, paying special attention to the characterization of the heat convection resulting from the buoyancy–induced flow in the open air channel which proved to be a critical aspect of the ventilated wall's behaviour. An integrated thermal and air flow model for the entire system was developed. A model of the ventilated wall construction was developed with the ESP-r simulation program and checked against experimental data from a real-scale test cell facility. The thermal benefits of adding a radiant barrier layer were also investigated. The results showed that this layer was beneficial in terms of the energy performance of the construction. Also, the comparison between the experimental and simulation model results showed satisfactory levels of convergence with the exception of the night hours during the summer period. A sensitivity analysis was also undertaken in order to investigate the main factors and the extent of their effect on the temperature variation inside the ventilated facades