An Urban Approach To Climate Sensitive Design

by Rohinton Emmanuel

Rapid urbanization in the tropics has brought in its wake many hitherto unknown changes to humans, animals and plants and the physical environment. Many of these changes are well studied by researchers in diverse fields such as medicine, agriculture and engineering. However, the climatic effect of urbanization has not been understood nor the knowledge base applied by urban designers, planners, architects and engineers. In particular, the energy and bio-climatic implications of changes induced by urbanization have received very little attention in urban design and planning. This book lays out the problem of tropical urban climate anomaly and points to possibilities of mitigating these changes through design and planning options. An Urban Approach To Climate Sensitive Design brings together the emerging literature on climate-sensitive urban design and places it in a tropical context. The physical processes behind changing urban climate are clearly illustrated.; The book presents a general background to the environmental issues facing tropical building designers - energy consumption and comfort implication of buildings and an overview of microclimate changes brought about by urbanization. New ways of looking at urban design are presented from a climatic design perspective. The focus of the book is design strategies that can mitigate the negative impacts of tropical urban climate. Three such design goals are: radiant cooling, ventilation and evaporative cooling. Simple design strategies further develop the conceptual ideas, including discussion of a D hadow umbrella D " or sun avoidance scheme and demonstrates its applicability to the equatorial tropics. In order to make the discussions on urban energy use and energy efficiency complete, the book closes the discussions with a series of strategies that facilitate movement between inter-connected urban activity patterns in a climatically suitable manner. Urbanization in tropical regions is beginning to gather momentum and is likely to intensify in the near future. This book fills a crucial gap in the knowledge of climate-sensitive urban design in a tropical context.

184 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 2004

About the author

Professor Rohinton Emmanuel is Professor in Sustainable Design and Construction at Glasgow Caledonia University and has over 20 years of University teaching experience in Sri Lanka, Sweden, USA and the UK.

As an Architect with urban design interests, Rohinton pioneered the inquiry of urban overheating in tropical cities and has taught and consulted on climate, energy and environment -sensitive design, building and urban sustainability and its assessment, urban heat islands and energy efficiency.

Rohinton leads the Sustainable Urban Environment Research Group (SUE-RG) and is an elected member of and Secretary to the Board of the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC). He is also a member of a World Meteorological Organization Expert Team on Urban and Building Climatology and the Working Group on ‘Climate Change and the Built Environment’ (W108) of the International Council for Buildings (CIB).

He has designed LEED-certified buildings and has consulted widely in the area of energy efficiency and sustainability in the built environment. Current research includes the development of the next generation of building sustainability assessment systems, natural building materials and processes for energy efficiency in existing buildings and urban heat island measurement in Glasgow, funded by UK and EU funding bodies.