Waste management and material recycle as a potential of sustainable building envelope for low income housing

Energy crisis and pollution are two main challenges that hinder sustainable development in Egypt. Electricity represents the major part of Egypt energy; however, the Egyptian electricity consumption is increasing much faster than capacity expansions which causes electrical blackout. Egypt’s electricity prices began to rise starting July 2015 as part of a plan to reduce the government subsistence on electricity and force people to rationalize the consumption. Residential buildings are representing 40% of the total energy consumption, in Egypt. This is mainly due to a poor design of buildings, with no concern to neither materials used nor building tightness. This results in high cold bridges that increase the heat transfer from the outside to the inside of building spaces leading to high internal discomfort. Concomitantly, impacting the increase of energy consumption in cooling and heating today in most Egyptian buildings. This paper is part of a multiphase experimental research work that represents an empirical comparative study of different thermal walls’ created from recyclable materials. The results would be analyzed in details, developed, and evaluated in terms of; technical, economic and environmental aspects and conditions. As a result of this study; the walls of such economical homes will be able to resist heat transfer with lowest possible cost and consume less energy

Biophilic architecture: a review of the rationale and outcomes

Contemporary cities have high stress levels, mental health issues, high crime levels and ill health, while the built environment shows increasing problems with urban heat island effects and air and water pollution. Emerging from these concerns is a new set of design principles and practices where nature needs to play a bigger part called “biophilic architecture”. This design approach asserts that humans have an innate connection with nature that can assist to make buildings and cities more effective human abodes. This paper examines the evidence for this innate human psychological and physiological link to nature and then assesses the emerging research supporting the multiple social, environmental and economic benefits of biophilic architecture

Empirical investigation to explore potential gains from the amalgamation of Phase Changing Materials (PCMs) and wood shavings

The reduction of gained heat, heat peak shifting and the mitigation of air temperature fluctuations are some desirable properties that are sought after in any thermal insulation system. It cannot be overstated that these factors, in addition to others, govern the performance of such systems thus their effect on indoor ambient conditions. The effect of such systems extends also to Heating, Ventilation and Air-conditioning (HVAC) systems that are set up to operate optimally in certain conditions. Where literature shows that PCMs and natural materials such as wood-shavings can provide efficient passive insulation for buildings, it is evident that such approaches utilise methods that are of a degree of intricacy which requires specialist knowledge and complex techniques, such as micro-encapsulation for instance. With technical and economic aspects in mind, an amalgam of PCM and wood-shavings has been created for the purpose of being utilised as a feasible thermal insulation. The amalgamation was performed in the simplest of methods, through submerging the wood shavings in PCM. An experimental procedure was devised to test the thermal performance of the amalgam and compare this to the performance of the same un-amalgamated materials. Comparative analysis revealed that no significant thermal gains would be expected from such amalgamation. However, significant reduction in the total weight of the insulation system would be achieved that, in this case, shown to be up to 20.94%. Thus, further reducing possible strains on structural elements due to the application of insulation on buildings. This can be especially beneficial in vernacular architectural approaches where considerably large amounts and thicknesses of insulations are used. In addition, cost reduction could be attained as wood shavings are significantly cheaper compared to the cost of PCMs

New Egypt with a New Hybrid Skin “A New Hybrid Architecture Vision for the Egyptians‘Development Corridor”

AbstractAfter the 25th of January revolution, Egypt was looking for a national project combines the energies of its young generations and draws a new image for Egypt. The development corridor for Farouk el Baz which aims to provide numerous opportunities for the development of new communities, agriculture, industry, trade and tourism around a 2,000km strip of the Western Desert, Became one of the current national projects. This development corridor includes the establishment of a superhighway to be built using the highest international standards, 1,200km in length, from west of Alexandria to the southern border of Egypt, Twelve east-west branches, with the total length of approximately 800km, to connect the highway to high-density population centers along the way, A railroad for fast transport parallel to the superhighway, A water pipeline from the Toshka Canal to supply freshwater, and An electricity line to supply energy during the early phases of development. So, what would be the architecture of the new Egypt? How to avoid the current mistakes and problems in the existing urban environment? The new hybrid architectural skin is one of the suggested proposals for the new Egypt, and it means designing an eco-friendly, energy efficient Buildings qualified for LEEDs and Energy Star ratings. It also means, using technology and natural materials to create a healthy living urban environment. The research will come out with different scenarios for the new Egypt hybrid architecture and its guidelines

Building community-driven vertical greening systems for people living on less than £1 a day: A case study in Nigeria

This paper reports and evaluates the process involved in designing and building affordable community-driven vertical greening systems (VGS) prototypes in a low-income neighbourhood of Lagos, Nigeria. Prototypes are intended to fulfil the dual function of improving indoor thermal comfort conditions and providing substrate to grow edible and medicinal plants. Besides that, the research aims to identify entrepreneurial competences and relationships in the community to transform the prototypes into commercially viable local products. ‘Qualitative fieldwork’ is used as a methodological approach and a product development roadmap is proposed that reports: design and construction development; performance evaluation of thermal impact and plant growth; costing; and community acceptability of the four different prototypes built in two different phases: rainy season 2014 and dry season 2016. The prototypes reduced internal air temperatures by an average of 2.3°C, moving internal comfort conditions to the comfort zone for around 90% to 100% of the time. Besides that, they provided around 16 crops of edible and medicinal plants per year. For two variants of prototypes (bamboo and prefabricated timber), the study reports a range of revenues from the sales of crops, and the estimated payback period (PBP) and internal rate of return (IRR) of the investment