The contributions to knowledge documented in this doctoral thesis are two-fold. The first contribution is in the application of a new biomimetic design tool called BioTRIZ. Its creators claim it can be used to facilitate the transfer of biological principles to solve engineering problems. The core case-study of this thesis documents how this tool was used to frame and systematically explore low-energy solutions to a key technical problem in the underdeveloped field of radiative cooling. Radiative cooling is a passive mechanism through which heat from a building can be rejected to the sky – an abundant but underused natural heat sink. Published in the Journal of Bionic Engineering, the study was the first independent application of BioTRIZ in the academic literature. The second contribution to knowledge is in the design, development and testing of the most promising biomimetic concept to come out of the BioTRIZ radiative cooling study. ‘Heat-selective’ insulation gives a roof mass a cool view of the sky because integrated pathways focus and channel longwave thermal radiation through it. It is biomimetic because it achieves infrared transparency by adding structural hierarchy to the component, rather than manipulating the properties of the material itself. Test panels on a rooftop in central London cooled to between 6 and 13 degrees below ambient temperature on May and April nights. Radiative cooling powers of between 25 and 70 W/m2 were measured when plates were at ambient temperature. Daytime radiative cooling below ambient temperature occurred when clouds blocked direct sunlight. Radiative cooling power was increased by 37% using reflective ‘funnels’. Two additional BioTRIZ analyses are presented as minor case studies. They each attend to a key technical problem in the field of passive thermal energy storage in buildings. They serve to illustrate the type of results that can be expected from using BioTRIZ during low-energy building design.

Honduras faces the highest levels of economic inequality in Latin America, 66% of the population live in poverty, 8.1% is the unemployment rate and 1.1 million the housing deficit. One million affordable housing units need to be built to cover the shortfall, which is concentrated mainly in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and Choloma. Building at least half a million new homes and improving about 600,000 that do not meet the minimum conditions of habitability is what is needed in Honduras, particularly in the cities of San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa is required. In Honduras, the government has the goal to massify new low-income affordable housing developments around cities, with an estimated 12,000 new households to be constructed across Honduras by the end of 2018. But as in most developing countries, sustainable design is not taken into consideration when it comes to affordable housing developments, yet low income-families are highly affected from increasing energy prices and environmentally related health issues. These large-scale projects could minimize local and global environmental impacts and improve the quality of life of its inhabitants, if sustainable guiding standards are embraced during design, construction, and maintenance. The rising cost of utilities are affecting low-income families in “affordable” housing developments, the energy expenses force them to make hard choices between basic needs or going back to informal settlements. For this reason, reducing operating and maintenance cost should be a priority for low-income housing design Passive design is any technology or strategy that increase energy-efficiency and thermal comfort by taking advantage of the climate, without the need for expensive mechanical systems. The study analyses different passive design strategies that are applicable for affordable housing developments. Such strategies are orientation, shading, natural ventilation, daylight, and open spaces. The aim is to address energy efficiency and thermal comfort by evaluating and suggesting solutions that improve the quality of life of low-income families in affordable housing developments. The application of passive design strategies showed a 44% reduction in electric utilities, a base case and a proposed design was modeled in eQuest, energy modeling software. The results show a significant reduction towards low-income families’ housing expenses.

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Passive solar strategies have been present in architectural design for a long time. Basic concepts such as south facing openings to capture winter sunlight had been understood since ancient times and came about as a necessity to heat and cool a building with modern day mechanical systems. Over time, architects began to recognize the importance of sunlight and fresh air as primary concerns of design. Much of this understanding began to take place through practices originally implemented as a means for aiding in human recovery from disease. Sanatoriums began to emerge in the early 1900's, providing groundbreaking design strategies that incorporated natural sunlight and exposure to fresh air as means for recovery. At the time, these design strategies were not fully recognized for their ability to aid in a building's energy usage but were primarily focused on human health. These early projects still functioned exceptionally well for their time and many still function today. Unfortunately, while these projects were starting to break ground in solar design practices, the invention of forced air heating and cooling was starting to work its way into buildings. Petrochemical heating and cooling quickly became the standard for how buildings would operate. Over time, the primary focus of design began to stray away from traditional methods of passive design in favor of the simpler implementation of mechanical HVAC systems. Over the past decade, there has been a shift in architectural design with a much stronger focus on sustainability. As research is being done into climate change and the negative affects it has had on our planet, architects have come to understand how important the role of the building plays in the world ecosystem. Buildings account for roughly 40% of human energy consumption, with the major share of this energy use being focused on heating and cooling. Passive designs are so important because they can begin to cut into this energy usage, and in some case even reduce it entirely through net zero projects. The architect has near complete control over the passive design of a building because the passive solar strategies are inherently "built in" to the building through its site orientation, formal strategies, and shading. It is the responsibility of the architect to consider these factors. It is important, however, that passive strategies do not overlook human health and productivity. Human sensitivity to thermal and lighting conditions is equally as important as the building's energy performance. Humans are very sensitive to light conditions, an idea expressed early on in the sanatorium movement. Access to natural light aids in human health, benefiting a multitude of anatomical systems. It also aids in mental health, aiding in creativity, emotional well-being, and focus. The lighting conditions of a building affect our natural circadian rhythm on a daily basis. Combining ideas of passive solar design in terms of energy use and human health, this thesis hopes to create ideal conditions for the building and its inhabitants by optimizing building and human performance. / Master of Architecture / Passive design strategies are those that are inherent to the design of the building. Window shades, building orientation, materialliity, are just some of the examples of factors that go into passive design. Passive design is where architects can have the greatest control, simply due to the fact the design of the building is performative in itself. These strategies use the sun to aid with natural heating, cooling, and lighting, which is a much more sustainable practice than traditional mechanical systems. Passive design has been used dating back to ancient times. Greek towns were typically planned with large courtyards oriented to the south to capture sunlight. Ancient adobes were carved into the side of south facing cliffs to capture the warmth of the sun. This thesis expands upon these traditional strategies with the use of modern knowledge and technologies. This thesis takes concepts of passive solar design a step further by introducing concepts that can promote human health and productivity. Humans have evolved to live in cooperation with the sun. We have natural rhythms that allow our bodies and minds to be in tune with the rising and setting sun. In addition to natural cycles over the course of the day, we are uniquely in tune with qualities of light. We interpret light as intensity and temperature, both which combine to produce a "quality" to the light. These different qualities are better suited for different activity, whether that be relaxing, focused work, or gathering. With a passive design project that is focused so heavily on the sun, it was important to consider how this would affect the inhabitants of the building. By combining sustainable passive design strategies with concepts surround human health and productivity, this project outlines a method for design that can inspire public works to pay attention to detail when planning spaces. Through careful consideration of site specific climate data and its connection to not only building performance but human well-being, this thesis project provides a new form of thinking for solar design.

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone / The traditional architecture is replaced with modern architecture which delivers less sustainable designs. The houses consume more energy, are less useful, and eventually cost more money. The focus of social, economical, and environmental impacts helps the project become more sustainable. The pillars are narrowed to patterns and principles. The vernacular architecture with passive design supports the principle. A Pattern Language with logical explanation supports the patterns. The design includes a floor plan, elevations, and section to provide the idea of how to apply the principles and patterns.

The building sector consumes 32% of global energy used, and it is responsible for 20% of total greenhouse gases emissions. In Europe, more than one third of the buildings are 50 years or older, thus, it is critical that new dwellings are designed in the most efficient way from an energy perspective, since the consequences of the decisions taken today will remain during decades. The use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software is promising for the design of a wide range of constructions; from small dwellings to big apartment buildings. These programs allow the architect, designer or civil consultant to perform several simulations of the energy behavior of a building in a timely manner, even before a single brick is put in place. Among them, IDA ICE software utilized in this thesis is a top rated program, situated by some authors within the four main building energy simulation tools. This is an outstanding fact considering that it is estimated in more than 400 the number of available BIM programs. With the help of IDA ICE it will be demonstrated that for a dwelling object of study, located in Madrid (Spain), it is possible to save up to 4 250€ through the entire life of the building if the proper orientation is chosen. The discussed literature and results will also show that orientation is, by far, the most critical passive design parameter related to a building, from which the efficacy of other related measures depends on.   It will be also proven that the optimal orientation depends on the weather where the dwelling is located, even though a general trend consisting in orienting the houses located in the northern hemisphere to the south, and vice versa, is observed. Building orientation, BIM programs, building energy consumption, passive design parameters, IDA-ICE simulation tool.

Climate change temperatures expected to rise and extreme heat events (HW) canbe intensified. The influence of climate change on the built environment willbecame more apparent over the coming years. For example, there would be ashift in the risk of overheating in buildings, as well as the cooling and heatingneeds.Studies found that design strategies used to optimize buildings for winter like:good thermal insulation, high airtightness, and extra heat gains increase the riskof overheating. Thus, because of climate change, there is a need for checking thebuildings for summer conditions even in heating dominated countries.This study aims to investigate the potential of two main passive design strategiesto mitigate indoor overheating: ventilation and shading. The main focus of thisstudy is on single-family homes within the Swedish context. Bysjöstrand EkobyAssociation’s Bysjöstrand eco-village project is used as case study. 30 singlefamilyhomes are simulated using Honeybee to run EnergyPlus for calculatingindoor mean air temperature values, extracting the number of hour andpercentages of overheating for each building.Six alternative scenarios were used to evaluate the eco-village. The firststructures were assessed to determine the hours and percentage of time spentoverheating in the present and future situations. The second scenarios, whichinvolved utilizing natural ventilation, was tested to determine if and to what extentit can help to reduce the overheating risk in present and future.A combination of natural ventilation and shading was used for the last scenariosboth for current and future climate.According to the findings, natural ventilation has the greatest influence in reducingoverheating. Combining these two strategies in 2020 and 2070 can lower theaverage percentages of overheating from 17.5 % to 0.6 % and 52.8 % to 12.4%,respectively.The majority of the overheating risk may be addressed using passive strategies,based on the results. More detailed building design is likely be able to eliminateoverheating in single family homes, however, as this study showed it is importantto consider passive strategies from the early stage on the design process.

Decisions made at the early stage of building and settlement design can greatly influence the energy performance of the built environment. However, the type of feasible design intervention and their impact strong depends on project: if it is a new development or a re-development, whether the setting of the project is urban or rural, etc. Utilizing Bysjöstrand EcoVillage as a case, the aim of this thesis is to improve the energy performance of a new development at its early design stage through the passive and active use of solar energy. The study evaluated the energy saving potential of various passive solar design strategies as well as the solar energy potential of the new development. The steps taken to reduce the energy consumption are focused on the annual heating demand of buildings, since it accounts for more than a half of the total energy consumed by the village. The energy saving potential of the following passive solar design approaches were considered: building siting, building orientation, windows-to-wall ratio (WWR) analysis and insulation thickness optimization from the economic perspective. Furthermore, an assessment of energy generation potential from on-site photovoltaic (PV) systems was conducted. The financial viability of each building’s PV system was also conducted. According to the results, the evaluated passive solar design strategies can reduce the annual heating energy consumption close to 17 %. Regarding onsite energy generation, electricity from roof-installed PV systems can cover over 100% of the annual energy consumption estimated for the residential lighting and equipment within the eco-village. In summary, this study has demonstrated that with the above design considerations a 50 % reduction of energy consumption from the utility grid is possible. This study is useful for architects, energy engineers, and other parties who are involved in residential buildings energy performance optimization.

Decisions made at the early stage of building and settlement design can greatly influence the energy performance of the built environment. However, the type of feasible design intervention and their impact strong depends on project: if it is a new development or a re-development, whether the setting of the project is urban or rural, etc. Utilizing Bysjöstrand EcoVillage as a case, the aim of this thesis is to improve the energy performance of a new development at its early design stage through the passive and active use of solar energy. The study evaluated the energy saving potential of various passive solar design strategies as well as the solar energy potential of the new development. The steps taken to reduce the energy consumption are focused on the annual heating demand of buildings, since it accounts for more than a half of the total energy consumed by the village. The energy saving potential of the following passive solar design approaches were considered: building siting, building orientation, windows-to-wall ratio (WWR) analysis and insulation thickness optimization from the economic perspective. Furthermore, an assessment of energy generation potential from on-site photovoltaic (PV) systems was conducted. The financial viability of each building’s PV system was also conducted. According to the results, the evaluated passive solar design strategies can reduce the annual heating energy consumption close to 17 %. Regarding onsite energy generation, electricity from roof-installed PV systems can cover over 100% of the annual energy consumption estimated for the residential lighting and equipment within the eco-village. In summary, this study has demonstrated that with the above design considerations a 50 % reduction of energy consumption from the utility grid is possible. This study is useful for architects, energy engineers, and other parties who are involved in residential buildings energy performance optimization.

Many plant species, including Barrel Cacti, have developed long-term evolutionary adaptable traits to survive in extreme climates. The most important trait of cacti in extreme hot dry climates is to reduce water evaporation and increase water storage. The exterior skin of a cactus plays an important role in preventing water evaporation through heat transmission. On the other hand, there have been many passive design strategies applied to the space planning and building design of architecture in hot dry climates. The goal of these passive design strategies is to regulate the penetration of heat into building spaces while creating a strong ventilation system to help bring cool air inside the building. In this paper, adaptations of the Barrel Cactus' exterior skin, along with architectural passive design strategies for hot dry climates (in this caseYazd, Iran) will be discussed and integrated with one another through the concept of Biomimicry. The goal is to design an exterior building skin that is attuned to the environmental conditions of a hot dry climate, based on the successful applicable behaviors demonstrated in the Barrel Cactus. Key architectural features such as natural ventilation and daylight will be informed by the evolutionary cacti adaptations and passive architectural strategies in the design of the building skin in order to increase the possibility of consistent comfort for users of an office building.