Arunabha Sau

Low-energy Passive Solar Residence in Austin, Texas: Finding out the Possibility to Reduce Discomfort Hours in House Using Solar Chimney, Natural Ventilation and Dual Façade in Hot-humid Climate Arunabha Sau

Abruptly 40% of the world has hot-humid climate. In hot-humid climate, the wide span of temperature and humidity cause architectural designers a huge trouble to design a non-air conditioned built environment, if they have to design to provide optimum thermal comfort throughout the year. Therefore, from the ages, in every civilization , it has been an eternal challenge for designers, to design a thermally comfortable built environment for the climatic condition. In 1980s with the invention of mechanical ventilation the world changed; it erased the history- old architectural research to search the optimum inside building comfort by passive solar design. Now, it's time to oil our history-old research to find the way the design for the optimum comfort by only design. Two major issues ? temperature and humidity; to solve them I've chosen the wind and the sun. For wind power, I conceptualized a wind catcher; and to get the maximum use of the sun I designed a concave glass wall to absorb the highest amount of solar radiation. From a simple simulation of the design in Autodesk® Ecotect® showed more than fifty percent of reduction of discomfort degree hours.