Urbanization has led to the accumulation of heat in urban areas. In other words, cities demonstrate higher temperatures than surrounding rural suburbs, known as the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI). This phenomenon has substantial consequences on energy consumption for cooling purposes, air quality, and human health.
As a metropolitan city, Damascus experiences a high urban heat island effect due to many factors. The intensity of UHI in Damascus is high and could reach 10˚C. Therefore, a mitigation strategy is a necessity.
A possible solution could be integrating the Living wall system (LWS) into the built environment. However, the living wall system’s implementation is still limited due to different factors such as the high initial cost, the complexity of the system, and technical difficulties. Furthermore, the efficiency of this system in mitigating the urban heat island still needs to be further investigated.
Thus, this research focuses on analyzing the UHI effect, designing LWS for Damascus’s context, and then investigating the proposed design’s efficiency as a UHI mitigation strategy

In the last few decades, air pollution constitutes a major global problem that results in adverse effects on human’s health, nature and the built environment. Many abatement strategies have been adopted for its combat in all these different fields. This graduation project focuses on the built environment and tackles the application of TiO2 on facades of existing buildings with historical significance in the city of Athens. TiO2 is a promising photocatalytic material, capable of neutralizing air pollutants via the mechanism of photocatalysis and under certain environmental conditions. Its use aims at a wider application in urban landscapes, in order to alleviate the air pollution levels. This widespread application can be achieved by the creation of 3 different TiO2 application levels that can be applied on the different facade components. The choice of application is realized mainly via the assessment of their NOx efficiency, the assessment of values employed in the field of conservation as well as their effect on cost. This evaluation takes place through a number of steps that a designer can follow for the selection of the suitable level as well as for the components that can eventually be modified.

In the current thesis, this set of steps/roadmap is presented and validated with the help of an actual case study, where the balconies are the main chosen facade element undergoing alterations of the 2nd level. It goes without saying that the flow can be followed and applied for different components, different buildings or even in different cities and locations. Athens is simply a representative example for this cause. Since the main goal of the project is the optimum performance of TiO2, a series of different balcony panels are designed via the manipulation of surface area and roughness, two very crucial factors for the successful activation of photocatalysis and pollutant neutralization. The panels undergo 3 different analyses: radiation, wind and NOx removal with a successive evaluation, resulting in one ideal geometry, whose NOx levels are compared to those prior to its implementation and those of the 1st application level.

The final part of the graduation project focuses on the results yielded by these different analyses and the conclusions that are pointed out and could prove pivotal for a designer. After the application of the panels to the chosen street canyon, the evaluation of the NOx abatement efficiency, the value and cost of each tested scenario, results indicate that the 2nd application level of TiO2 is more efficient than the 1st in terms of NOx removal efficiency. Nevertheless, a combination of both levels could considerably balance all 3 criteria, namely the aspect of NOx removal, values and cost.

Keywords: Urban Facades I Air Pollution I TiO2 I Air Purification I Historical Significance

Kinetic responsive systems are gaining attention in architectural applications, to help reduce the building’s energy consumption and environmental impact, while improving the indoor comfort conditions. The thesis explores the potentials of Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) for the design of autoreactive facade systems without using additional energy. The exploration is conducted and assessed through the design of a facade concept for the city of Athens in Greece, aiming to improve both the indoor and outdoor environment by means of a kinetic autoreactive system, with a focus on the building’s direct and indirect impact on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. The methodology follows a feedback-loop logic informed by environmental and energy performance evaluation studies conducted in the Grasshopper environment to optimize the shape, geometry and movement of the proposed shading component. Throughout the facade design development, a comprehensive and systematic computational toolset is being developed, targeted on the abovementioned performance evaluation studies with the goal to compose a combined digital tool to facilitate designers and other specialists in the area. The proposed facade system, as a case study application and outcome of this iterative process, features a dynamic seasonal response, triggered by the temperature changes and exhibits a dual function. During the cooling-dominated periods, the aim is to reduce the cooling demands, by increasing the reflective surfaces directing the incoming solar radiation to the atmosphere, while also increasing the shading and self-shading effect through undulated geometries. In the contrary, during the heating-dominated periods, the system adapts a double facade function with multiple-cavity zones for heat amplification, with a higher solar absorption enabled through larger sun exposure. The system’s mechanism composed of two SMA wires, operates in coordination with a pivot axle and rotating mechanism, in combination with elastic steel threads and membranes that can accommodate the dynamic deformations. The activation of the SMAs, due to the environmental temperature changes, causes their linear deformation and initiates with a single movement the linear and rotational movement of the components involved, in a cause-effect internal system, while also controlling the cavity aperture. The design aims to minimize the need for actuators and mechanical parts with no additional energy, while the study evaluates in parallel the energy and environmental performance in the urban microclimate and the potential for passive operation. Through the development and assessment of the facade concept, the objective is to explore the potentials and limitations for the application of autoreactive envelopes in the facade design and development. At the same time, the aim is to exploit the possibilities and optimization potentials offered through the developed iterative computational workflows. This is realized through an interoperability logic of the digital tools used for the data interchange, which can be developed and used as a toolset in a broader range of applications, with the studied facade design as one demonstration example of its use in practice.

The positive impact of green roofs for the users and the building performance has been demonstrated in research and practice throughout case studies from all over the world. Variations of these interventions have categorized the characteristics that will increase their performance under different climatic conditions. Not only for the building performance and aesthetics, but for the urban environment as well. For cities like Rotterdam, the increasing effect of urban environmental issues is a fact. Predictions show that they will become critical factors for the development and upgrade of urban areas in the coming years. Green roofs can play a significant role on this problematic, and their potential has been recognized by the Municipalities as well, where different initiatives and subsidies have been created to increase their rate of implementation. Nevertheless, there are still many factors restricting their implementation and causing the increase of costs of these interventions. An important one is the weight of these interventions, for which current structures are not prepared for and reinforcement strategies are required.

This research focusses on the exploration of roof reinforcement strategies for the implementation of multifunctional roofs: Interventions that combine green roofs with different functions to increase their performance for the building, their impact for the city and the benefits for the investor’s interest. The city of Rotterdam is used as the context, where the vast flat-roof areas on post-war typologies create a great opportunity for the exploration of systemic solutions. Replicable strategies that will enable buildings for multifunctional interventions, increasing the roof’s loadbearing capacity, and making these interventions more accessible. The research concludes with the proposal of a strategy and its evaluation on fulfilling the given objectives.

The evolution of high-rises puts more challenge for achieving indoor visual comfort because the source of getting natural light inside is solely through sidewalls; especially in deep floorplan like office buildings, where visual discomfort is very usual to be experienced. Without any measure taken, it leads to a situation where the illuminance exceeds the comfort requirement next to the window by making an over-lit area which causes glare issues; furthermore, the illuminance decreases in a gradient along the depth leaving illuminance below comfort requirement towards end of the room making under-lit area, which demands use of artificial lighting. This creates an uncontrolled and non-uniform distribution of daylight along the depth. Moreover, daylight is very dynamic in nature that keeps changing along the time, this adds complexity in design; and hence it leads to use of computational design methods.
This research aims to improve visual comfort efficiency of an office space with the help of computational methods by developing a facade system that distributes the daylight to indoor space more uniformly, bringing balance of light intensity between under-lit and over-lit areas of a space to a visually comfortable range or daylit range (300-2000 lux), adapts to various external factors that are responsible for dynamic daylight behaviour; and results in a controlled distribution of daylight throughout the depth of the space for occupant’s comfort. The strategies applied for the design development as computational methods is by mean of parametric modelling, daylight simulation and optimisation.
The study results in a dynamic façade scheme that validates with visual comfort criteria, which also includes evaluation of glare and contrast. The study also covers constructability and feasibility aspects of the proposed scheme. As the final outcome, an average of 88% of working plane is found to be within the daylit range having average illuminance of 561 lux, which is distributed with an average uniformity ratio of 0.57 with minimal risk of glare and contrast; validating that visually comfortable environment is achieved. This further indicates that the use of artificial light can be reduced by 88%, saving equivalent energy consumption concerning artificial lighting.

Bioreceptivity in building envelopes is a new type of facade greening system which thrives to improve the urban climate. In this type of facade greening the building envelope acts as a mediating layer between indoor and external conditions. This research focuses on the impact of the implementation of bioreceptive facade panels in the urban climate of The Netherlands; this includes designing in the urban climate and measuring what benefits these plants can bring, and how they can contribute to their own existence in their habitat.

Recent studies show an increase in energy use on buildings due to higher cooling demands, constituting an increase of 17% of the global energy consumption by 2050. Tendencies also show that cooling degree days around the globe will also increase and this will display a greater impact on developing countries with warm climates. Subsequently, this gives interest in reducing energy demands on buildings through both innovative passive and active design strategies that can convert these buildings into energy efficient buildings whilst reaching their desired comfort values. The potential to integrate these strategies for cooling system into a building façade has been looked into by recent research. As is the case of the thermoelectric technology, which is a promising cooling technology that has gained interest from architects in the past few years, and it has a great potential for integration. This device has the advantage of generating a temperature difference between the device’s two sides when direct current is applied it and so it has been widely studied and used as coolers at small scale. There are not enough studies and experimentation of integration at façade level has been conducted with this technology, and those that exists show that the system’s performance is still much lower than traditional air-conditioning systems. Thus, this graduation project focuses on a performance-based design, where the heat dissipation system’s design and its integration with the TE is explored and investigated, what parameters affects its performance, and, subsequently, their effect on the façade and the architecture of the building within a hot-arid climate in Mexico. For this, a combination of experiments and simulations were used to determine the effect certain design parameters have on the thermal performance of the heat dissipation system. Parallel to this, an office case study was selected, and simulations performed to determine the ideal passive strategies for reduction cooling load in a hot-arid climate. A stepped methodology was used for the experiments and simulations for the heat dissipation system and a comparative evaluation on different passive design strategies for the office design was applied. A simplified heat transfer model for the heat dissipation of the thermoelectrical technology was developed, where a series of design strategies were possible to be tested. Analysing the results determined which parameters had a greater impact on the design, for the heat dissipation system its performance was evaluated through its COP, and for the office design lower cooling loads were the defining parameter. General trends were identified on both evaluated levels and each show their potential. These were then translated into design guidelines for the heat dissipation system and office building design and then visualized as a final thermoelectrical facade design. The final COP of the cooling system based on the heat dissipation designed was 1.40. An evaluation on the designed TE façade was done, its limitations and potentials stated, as well as future possibilities that be further developed with this technology.

Bio-receptivity is a natural growth of small plant species on stony surfaces with minimum external influence. It is commonly found around us on old buildings, crevices and corners, damp and moist areas. Bio-receptivity has always been viewed as a negative phenomenon in the public eye due to its random and shabby growth conditions. However, this phenomenon co-exists on building surfaces establishing a hybrid relationship, which poses several advantages on the building life-cycle. Apart from being a protective coating, its environmental benefits, like CO2 reduction in air, air purification through dust removal and cooling effect through evapotranspiration, has been known and researched through decades, but has not been brought into practice in the building industry. This research chooses to use geometry as a design variable to engineer self-sustaining moss growth on concrete panels in an ordered and systematic manner. The exercise is an attempt to not only address the functional aspect of Bio-receptivity but also its aesthetic quality which is vital to influence the perception of people and promote mass use of this new type of sustainable concrete material. The primary intend of the research is to gain a thorough understanding into the concept of Bio-receptivity and identify the governing factors responsible for the relationship between the small plant species and stony materials. Saxicolous moss like Tortula muralis and Grimmia Pulvinata are found to be the most common moss types growing on limestone base stony materials and is further utilized in the practical experiment. The research is conducted in a top-down approach, where first the designs are developed in an ordered system taking into consideration the growth structure of moss in nature and the influencing environmental characteristics, next the designs are fabricated into prototypes exhibiting the appropriate material properties and then validated through series of practical experimentation and CFD simulations to justify the influence of geometry; based on the comparative analysis of the results a general design guideline is provided for a self-sustaining Bio-receptive concrete facade panel. A real-time visual representation of Bio-receptive panel is presented as per the guidelines and an economically viable and technically feasible facade system is proposed to facilitate its commercial use on buildings/facades.

Temperatures are increasing all around the world due to climate change and are predicted to continue to rise in the future. This rise in temperature is worrying especially for urban areas around the world that already suffer from increased temperature due to the urban heat island effect. In order to adapt to these changes buildings often get outfitted with mechanical cooling, solving the temperature problems indoors but making the outdoor temperature rise even more and thereby creating a vicious cycle of increased demand for cooling and increased mechanical cooling. This research aims to search for a way to ensure indoor thermal comfort in a passive way without worsening the UHI-effect. This is done by creating an alternative design for a case study that is planned in a Dutch urban center and measuring its impact on the urban microclimate and its indoor thermal comfort performance in a future climate scenario. The alternative design is put together by designing and testing different compositions of passive measures found in the existing literature. These passive measures compositions are then analyzed by software simulation to assess their performance and the effect they may have on the urban microclimate and in turn what this changed urban microclimate means for the implementation of the passive measures. The final result is a building design that not only ensures indoor thermal comfort in current and future climate scenarios but also makes its surroundings more comfortable which in turn results into more manageable microclimate. Turning the vicious mechanical cooling circle into a passively cooled virtuous circle.

Building industry consumes around 50% of the world’s electricity consumption and space heating and cooling plays an important role in ozone depletion and global warming potential. Solar cooling technologies promise more sustainable approaches with reliance on solar energy as a renewable energy source. Thermoelectric technology is a promising solar cooling technology that is powered by electricity from PV panels and has been researched in recent years for investigation of potentials for building and façade integration. These small devices create a temperature difference between the two sides when applied to electricity and therefore, can be used in generating both cold and heat for conditioning of spaces. As an example of arid to semi-arid climates, Tehran has been selected as the context of this project. This graduation project focuses on designing an integrated façade product that uses thermoelectric technology for providing cooling and heating demands of an office building in Tehran. One of the main challenges of this design was the low performance of the TE system that could be increased in a few ways among which decreasing the temperature difference created at the two sides is the most crucial. An office building was initially selected to represent typical offices in Tehran and a few passive strategies including reductions in WWR, changing glazing type, applying insulation and reducing infiltration rate as well as using natural ventilation were implemented on this office model. The implementation of these passive measures leads to a decrease of 55 percent in the annual heating and cooling loads and 39 and 49 percent in the heating and cooling design capacity, respectively. Having this passive model, a ventilation integrated active cooling and heating system was developed that functions like a heat recovery system and uses extracted ventilation air to cool down the temperature of the hot side in summer. Fresh conditioned air is provided in this system through the cold side of the façade via an underfloor air distribution system. A unitized façade product was then developed to accommodate this integrated concept and it this TE system was proved to be flexible in terms of design and integration. To evaluate the performance of this façade, a comprehensive model was developed, and a code was written in EES to solve the equations simultaneously. A baseline model was set to simulate a summer peak situation and as a result, COP, electricity consumption, and temperature difference values were obtained. Next, all the variables in the model were studied and optimized to obtain the best results for every time step of the year. The annual simulations showed that average COP of 1 to 1.3 and 2.1 to 3.0 could be obtained for summer and winter conditions. Feasibility aspects of this façade unitized system were then studied and compared to other solar cooling technologies to obtain a better understanding of limitations and promises of this façade. It was found out that although in terms of performance and cost the TE façade can compete with other solar cooling technologies, issues such as weight, size requirements, and noise might affect its application in some cases.

Desigrate’ is designed to serve as a façade component of office buildings. Therefore, the building technology aspect of climate, façade detailing, and façade assembly is thoroughly discussed, optimized and evaluated to provide a product which acts efficiently as a cooling system and enhances the insulation of the building. Hence serving as a cooling strategy both actively and passively. Furthermore, as the façade system is specifically designed for the hot and humid climate of Bangkok, both climate and cultural context are crucial aspects in designing the system. The design concept of the façade system is based on a vernacular approach to enhance the cultural value of the product which aims to reflects the “Thainess” identity to the built environment.

The aim of this paper is to design a retrofit façade-integrated cooling system for built high-rise residential public housing buildings in the tropical climate and evaluate its feasibility. Literature research into the climate, building design, cooling technologies and case studies of façade-integrated systems were important factors that led to the conceptual designs. Energy calculations and parametric optimization through Rhinoceros + Grasshopper were conducted to develop the façade concepts to suit the cooling load of the chosen building. Material and component costs were calculated to evaluate which façade concept proposal was more suitable and what design constraints were introduced by the limited available physical space. With a chosen façade concept, minor tweaks were made to account for additional issues such as conduction heat loss and the oversizing of components. Façade details with respect to structural elements, moving parts, system operation and maintenance procedures were developed. The overall implications and limitations of the design were discussed with the aid of daylighting simulations and extrapolative calculations to paint a broader picture of its overall feasibility and what it takes to be realized.

Rapidly expanding urban developments are having an inverse relationship on the surrounding urban environment. Facades and the materials that they are composed of can have a large impact on the warming of urban microclimates. By reducing or cooling the external surfaces of a facade a building maybe able to offset its contribution to the urban heat island effect. The thesis will help quantify the theoretical impact that this new living facade system can have on external surface temperatures. However, because this is a new facade technique, developing the facade design will also generate the guidelines needed to achieve a bioreceptive urban facade. The resulting facade design will reveal insights and discover the limitations of such an application into urban environments.

The objective of the thesis is to reduce the cooling load of the offices in Delhi, India by integrating passive strategies and low-ex cooling (evaporative) technology through facades as a decentralized ventilation system. The cooling demand in India is going to increase up to 8 folds by 2030. Almost 50% of the energy is spent on space cooling for offices in Indian climatic conditions. In order to reduce the cooling demand alternative low ex cooling technologies are being researched and implemented. In this thesis, various types of evaporative cooling and their various properties and its application on Delhi’s climatic scenario and its limitations were studied as one of the low-ex techs. The study concludes by choosing Dew-point indirect evaporative cooler because of its high wet bulb effectiveness with no addition of humidity. For continuous operation, the humidity in the air needs to removed before supplying it to the cooler. So, the design involves a combination of Dew-point Indirect evaporative cooler (D-IEC) coupled with Desiccant coated heat exchanger (DCHE). The system also requires a source for heating and cooling down the water for Regeneration cycle and Dehumidification cycle, evaporative cooler respectively. The cooling demand of the building needs to be addressed by multiple devices in a decentralized ventilation system. The total number of devices required determines the cost of installation and ease of maintenance over the years and it depends on the cooling load. So, it is necessary to reduce the cooling demand of the building using passive strategies before integrating the evaporative cooler. The building’s cooling load has been reduced to 50W/m2 by adapting suitable passive strategies like shading systems, reducing U values of walls, glazing and roof, reducing infiltration and the internal heat gain. The above-mentioned strategies result in 146.41kWh/m2/yr with a water-based chiller (CENTRALIZED), and it is efficient when compared to the recommended national figure of 180 kWh/m2/yr. But using the De-VAP systems (DECENTRALIZED) cuts down the energy by even much further to up to 40% (92.26kWh/m2) in which almost 1/3rd of the energy can be generated by installing PV on the roof. This design takes us further one step closer to the NET ZERO building.

The thesis aims to offer a review of a modern conceptual facade focusing on one more possible solution to sustainable facade refurbishment for existing tall buildings. There are thousands of highrise buildings in the world and almost all of them over time will require some degree of refurbishment. The premise of this thesis is based on the rising ecological concern of human-made climate change, and the role building industry has in its effects. The thesis only focuses on a smaller part of the whole sector, namely “curtain wall facades”. But, data suggests that the demand of curtain wall systems is rising when they age or the buildings which already have deteriorated curtain walls for over 30 years will require some degree of intervention to improve the facade quality and the performance of the building using the facade. Alternatively, the increase in maintenance costs and utility costs will render the building undesirable and hence cause premature demolition of the facade or the building itself. Although this thesis only focuses on a specific region, the postulation of this research applies to any location based on region-specific analysis and design solution. The solution will mostly concentrate on feasibility aspects of design for disassembly and integrated functionality (BIPV) into one system, namely Plug & Play facades.

Air pollution is a worldwide prevailing issue affecting the health of human beings in urban areas requiring urgent measures to adopted. This graduation project targets on adoption of passive air remediation techniques that can be widely applied into urban areas. Within the passive technical measures available, integrating greeneries on the infrastructure and photocatalytic materials prove promising to be incorporated in a broader perspective. Photocatalytic materials one-time installation, easy to maintain and self-cleaning properties has led to the selection of this material to quantify its air purifying capability.
TiO2 coating has been used in building materials for its self-cleaning property. However, its capability to break down NOx compounds has broadened its scope for pollution abatement. Though it can be applied as a coating, the performance of the photocatalyst in urban scenarios is affected by contact wind speeds and incident UV irradiation. Also, increased surface area provides more area of photo catalytically active sites. These factors are governed by the geometrical form of the panel. Hence, the main objective of this research is to design a façade panel with enlarged surface area and surface roughness to manipulate the environmental factors to favor photocatalysis. Also, its air purification effect is quantified to understand the effectiveness of this passive strategy and the design.
The façade concept has been designed following a series of strategies to respond to wind and irradiation. The concept with optimum surface enlargement and irradiation is developed into modular panels which are materialized by choosing the material with least environmental impact. The final part of this graduation project is about applying these panels in the street canyons, a controlled urban environment and evaluating the pollution abatement. The results indicate a pollution abatement of 3.5% - 8.9% in winter and 18% - 37.5% in percentage in summer for London.

Nowadays, the energy consumption has a significant role in the entire life cycle of a building. The energy demands keep rising due to growth in population, increasing demand for healthy, comfort and productive indoor environment, global climate changing, and so on. This rapid increase in energy use in buildings represents a major issue especially in regions with extreme climate conditions. For instance, in tropical climates the major reason for the high energy consumption for any type of building is the use of air conditioning. Before the implementation of refrigeration technologies in the building industry and the increase of thermal comfort levels, designers in tropical climates used to tackle the climate conditions using natural methods to prevent the building from unwanted heat and to control the heat gains from the surrounding environment. Thus, this research investigate the possibility of designing a purely passive building in order to reduce at minimum the energy consumption of an office building in tropical climates, combining the bioclimatic approach and passive cooling strategies. In particular, the design objective is to define to what extent can the cooling consumption of an office building be decreased. Different design strategies are implemented and tested through Building Performance Optimization (BPO). In specific, two optimization rounds are run. The first to investigate the impact of envelope parameters, and the second to investigate the impact of the envelope and indoor comfort parameters on the cooling consumption.

Nowadays the use of renewable energy resources is a necessity. Approximately 13% of the energy spent in Greece comes from renewable energy resources, however a significantly higher percentage is essential in order to meet the European standards by 2020. A prompt solution is the in-situ energy generation. Additionally, the harmful emmisions of the various air-conditioning and refridgerating systems need to be eliminated. The current master thesis involves the use of solar energy for indoor temperature regulation, mainly for cooling purposes. This is achieved by the use of two different technologies; the photovoltaics and the thermoelectrics. A series of PV panels convert the solar energy to DC power, which is supplied to the thermoelectric devices. The TE modules are able to create temperature difference and depending on the direction of the DC current, they can function either for cooling or for heating. The system is 100% emission-free and can operate entirely on renewable energy. Location of the project is set to Athens, Greece, a city with rather high air-conditioning demands during summer and high solar irradiation all year long, traits which make it very favorable for a PV-TE solar cooling application. Objective of the thesis is to develop a solar cooling facade concept which, along with the implementation of passive design strategies, is able to cover the cooling and heating demands of a certain office space. Considering the context, the local climate, the prominent vernacular building strategies have been studied. Moreover, a field research and analysis of 25 case study buildings has been carried out leading to the definition of the ‘typical office building’ in Athens. Based on the typical office, a passive optimization with the implementation of multiple passive strategies has been carried out resulting in the optimum scenario. The PV and TE system has been calculated and designed according to the optimum passive scenario and is applied on a case-study building. A range of architectural possibilities is explored, based on the typical office buildings of the area.