Passive and active hybrid approach to buildings design in Saudi Arabia

The building sector is one of the highest consumers of energy in the world. This has led to high dependency on using fossil fuel to supply energy without due consideration to its environmental impact. Saudi Arabia has been through rapid development accompanied by population growth, which in turn has increased the demand for construction. However, this fast development has been met without considering sustainable building design. General design practices rely on using international design approaches and features without considering the local climate and aspects of traditional passive design. This is by constructing buildings with a large amount of glass fully exposed to solar radiation. The aim of this paper is to investigate the development of sustainability in passive design and vernacular architecture. Furthermore, it compares them with current building in Saudi Arabia in terms of making the most of the climate. Moreover, it will explore the most sustainable renewable energy that can be used to reduce the environmental impact on modern building in Saudi Arabia. This will be carried out using case studies demonstrating the performance of vernacular design in Saudi Arabia and thus its benefits in terms of environmental, economic and social sustainability. It argues that the adoption of a hybrid approach can improve the energy efficiency as well as reduce the carbon footprint of buildings. This is by combining passive design, learning from the vernacular architecture and implementing innovative sustainable technologies.

Natureza morta...edifício com vida: uma arquitetura sustentável para o Serviço de Verificação de Óbitos

Sustainability in buildings, while reducing the impact on the environment, contributes to the promotion of social welfare, to increase the health and productivity of occupants. The search for a way of build that meets the aspirations and development of humanity without, however, represent degradation of the environment, has become the great challenge of contemporary architecture. It is considered that the incorporation of principles that provide a sustainable building with careful choices of design solutions contribute to a better economic and thermal performance of the building, as well as functional and psychological comfort to its users. Based on this general understanding, this paper presents an architecture project aimed to health care whose the solutions adopted follow carefully the relevant legislation and sets his sights on the theme of sustainability. The methodology began with studies on the themes of verification service of deaths, sustainability and those application in construction developed through research in academic studies and analysis of architectural projects, using them like reference for the solutions adopted. Within the project analysis was performed a visit to the verification service of deaths in the city of Palmas in Tocantins, subsidizing information that, plus the relevant legislation, led to functional programming and pre-dimensional of the building to be designed. The result of this programming environments were individual records with information from environmental restrictions, space required for the development of activities, desirable flow and sustainability strategies, that can be considered as the first product of relevance of the professional master's degree. Finally we have outlined the basic design architecture of a Verification Service of Death SVO/RN (in portuguese), whose process of projecting defined as a guiding line of work four points: the use of bioclimatic architecture as the main feature projectual, the use of resources would provide minimal harm to the environment, the use of modulation and structure to the building as a form of rationalization and finally the search for solutions that ensure environmental and psychological comfort to users. Importantly to highlight that, besides owning a rare theme in literature that refers to architectural projects, the whole project was drawn up with foundations in projective criteria that contribute to environmental sustainability, with emphasis on thermal performance, energy efficiency and reuse of rainwater

Padronização e flexibilidade: proposta de um edifício tipo para uma escola técnica profissionalizante

Nowadays the acquisition of sustainable elements and concepts in construction has been increasingly discussed, improved and incorporated to buildings, since the sector directly interferes in the urban space and environment, representing environmental impact. In order to make a sustainable building (Green Building) it is vital to incorporate less damaging constructive practice, starting from the project until the operation of the enterprise, that means to consider an integrated process of conception, implementation, construction and operation. The more effective sustainable principles participation in architecture happens at the projecting step through minimal environment impact solutions. Among the issues varieties that goes with sustainability proposal of the buildings project, there were added to this work the elements that are directly attached to bioclimatic architecture, more specifically the climate variation, ventilation, lighting and sunlight, that directly affect the project conception. It is important to put in evidence that architecture role goes far beyond the simple activity of building spaces; it is the sequence of political, economic, social and cultural elements, having the users as the main apparatus to its materialization. Thereby this professional dissertation consists of an architecture draft for a professional and technological school in the Rio Grande do Norte State, this dissertation is based on the analysis of previous experience and the bioclimatic principles that implicate in building on hot and dry, hot and humid climates, and the use of strategic solutions that aim the optimization of natural light and ventilation

Sustentabilidade urbana e as certificações ambientais na construção civil

There is a huge debate surrounding the sustainability issues, especially urban sustainability. This article seeks to establish a critique of models of sustainable cities and postmodern city structured by dispersed city model produced by the logic of capital, it is an effort to confront methodological theoretical models of two cities, the capitalist model of production space and model sustainable city, the dispersed city model against a model of the compact city. For example it was used as environmental certifications for building a label denoting sustainable building when actually articulate a series of symbols that mask and reaffirm their production processes from the perspective of capital cities

Técnicas construtivas e procedimentos sustentáveis – estudo de caso: edifício na cidade de São Paulo

The environmental problems generated by construction activity have been widely discussed in Brazil, which has begun to incorporate sustainable building techniques in your ventures. Based on these facts, this work focused on addressing the main characteristics of a sustainable building project. Among them are water conservation, energy efficiency in buildings, managing a construction site with little environmental impact and reuse of materials and construction elements. This work, after the presentation of the main characteristics of a sustainable building project, shows a case study about the implementation of environmental certification LEED Gold level in a large building, located in São Paulo - SP, Brazil. With that, we want to produce a research document about the topic of sustainable buildings

Tecnologias, conceitos e propostas de materiais de construção sustentável do Centro de Vivências da UNESP, Rio Claro/SP

Due to the great impact caused by construction, the university has a major role in the development of alternative projects and studies aimed at sustainable development. This project presents the advantages and importance of building in a sustainable manner from the beginning to end of the Center of Experiences at UNESP, Rio Claro / SP. It will be presented alternative building materials that have high environmental performance and that bring the least negative impacts as possible. Providing a Center of Experiences through a sustainable building is in need of the university to renovate the new trends of society in which the construction is in harmony with the environment in which it is inserted. This sustainable building will serve as a model for students and residents of Rio Claro, since the building itself will serve as a way of learning to the audience goer, as well as for the other campuses of UNESP. Thus, this project will serve as a guide for decision makers facing the huge amount of building materials available in the market

Técnicas de energia elétrica sustentável aplicadas em edificações

One of the majors concerns in society today is to decrease the environmental impact caused by human activities and natural resource exploration. From this need to be more careful with the environment arose, in the field of civil construction, the term sustainable building. Projects that use natural resources rationally, without ceasing to bring comfort and functionality for customers, are becoming more a reality. This paper presents the share of electric energy in a sustainable building, with the analysis of the available renewable energies used in a project, presentation of new constructive techniques and technologies that are constantly emerging to achieve greater energy efficiency, with an appropriate use of energy received, also a decrease of the energy consumed by some devices present in a residence or business

Proposta de adequação à construção sustentável: tecnologias e alternativas para instituições de ensino

Due to the huge impact negative on the environmental caused by the civil construction, the university plays a majorital role in the proposal of studies and projects that aim the sustainable building. Nowadays, it has been noted the great demand for projects which contain a systemic focus in the tripod of the sustainable development, that is to say, more and more the consumers are demanding that the final result of a project contemplate the social, economic and environmental areas. According to the National Industry Confederation (CNI) and the Brazilian Chamber of the Industry and the Construction (CBIS), the goal for 2020 is that the constructions have an environmental performance 20% higher in comparison to the actual one, starting with an index defined by many indicators, such as: water consumption, energy, residues generation and social-environmental performance of the bought products. In this case, the theme of the project comes around the adequation of scholar institutions to the sustainable construction through simple changes of tecnologies and habits aiming the growth of the environmental eficiency of the enterprise and, consequently, the improve of sustainable practices inside the institution. Once the change is proposed, it will be furnished datas liable of reproduction for the adequation of others scholar institutions, according to it's necessity or interest. After the realization of the studies, it was possible to notice that the environmental performance of a scholar institution can be improved through the implantation of tecnologies of fast return in the investment, such as: flow reducers, rain water reuse system, green roof, retrofit of lamps and execution of a photovoltaic system. Besides the fast return of investment, the monthly economy of the applied tecnologies combined can reach 75% when compared to the actual spending with water and electric energy

Home automation controller for a water-flow window

Facing the EU energy efficiency and legal scenarios related to buildings (2010/31 EU directive), new sustainable advanced concepts for envelopes are required. These innovative designs must be able to offer an elevated level of energy efficiency based on a high performance architecture. According to this, smart glazings, and particularly active water-flow glazings, represent a promising alternative to other solar control glazings, since they can reduce the building energy demand avoiding well known drawbacks as high cost, glare problems and high response time that affect to other smart glazings. This kind of glazing, as any other active one, needs to be operated by a control system. In order to operate a water-flow based window, a new controller based on an inexpensive microcontroller board has been developed

Housing plans and urban rehabilitation in Spain, 1992-2012

This paper explores the urban rehabilitation projects promoted by the Spanish Government between 1992 and 2012 through housing plans. The analysis is based on the comparison of programmes and estimations gathered in these plans with actual housing production within this period in order to find the connection between sectoral housing planning and real estate cycles in these last twenty years. During the period under review, six state housing plans, that were mainly focused on the promotion of newly-constructed state-subsidised housing, were developed, including the Areas of Integrated Rehabilitation programmes (ARI programmes). In spite of the relevance and growing complexity of these programmes, these played a subsidiary role in the government housing policy and were insignificant regarding the whole real estate production in this period.

On the improvement of urban regeneration processes from more than thirty years of rehabilitation experiences

At this moment of extended economic, social and environmental crisis within which new interventions on the consolidated city are being set out, it is essential to count on the acquired experience in urban rehabilitation processes that were carried out in Spain during the last thirty years. Despite the complexity of this kind of processes and the diversity of the situations and actions that happened, this paper addresses the analysis of common patterns in twenty urban rehabilitation experiences. Different stages of the processes were studied, from the management to the regenerated areas in order to ease the design of new intervention initiatives.

The role of the urban support in the regeneration of vulnerable neighbourhoods

The processes of social and urban segregation have got worse during the last decades. Several studies have deepened into the analysis of the causes and consequences of these processes and have tried to define solutions that beyond eradicating some specific problems, were aimed at the consolidation of sustainable urban environments. This paper presents an approach to the problem of urban inequality based on the concept of urban vulnerability as something that goes beyond the social and economic problems. In exclusion processes it is very important to consider the urban context and the physical and structural conditions not only in each neighborhood but also in the city as a whole. The paper seeks to pose a reflection on the urban support, which is understood in all its complexity and thought to be a key to ensure access and the right to the city of the citizens most in need.