EURO MED SEC 02


THE ELEMENTS OF NATURAL CONCEPT IN SUSTAINABLE BUILDING SKINS

TAHER SALAH, OMNIA MOHAMED, AKRAM AZMY


Abstract

Introducing new ideas and solutions that serve environmental functions in sustainable building designs have become an enormous challenge recently, particularly with the current practices of architects and designers in this field. To achieve comfort zone in commercial and residential spaces, the three major aspects that have to be considered are thermal, ventilation and daylight. The proposed project is located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and the main purpose of choosing this location is the hot weather in the U.A.E. Therefore, applying the bio-mimicry design on building skins will react as a solution to improve the indoor thermal comfort in reducing solar heat gain and achieving uniformity in daylight as well as focusing on ventilation in certain seasons, to motivate and enhance the natural ventilation pattern and to reduce the energy consumption as well. This study will mainly focus on developing a building skin that considers locally sourced material such as clay and protect birds' habitat by creating a place for breeding and feeding the birds as well as to integrate plant pots into the skin to reduce pollution. Secondly, combining it with a natural concept strategy that matches the various systems used, to enhance the indoor environment and the indoor comfort needs. The Simulation software, ECOTECT/IES, was used to measure the daylight and thermal performance levels before and after applying the skin concept. The expected findings of this paper may also help in solving part of the existing building envelopes and evaluate their negative impacts in the hot climate region.

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