Summer comfort in energy-efficient high-rise dwellings

Nowadays, the high rate of urban population growth due to immigration and scarcity of land has significantly increased the need for new high-rise dwellings. Meanwhile, the recent building regulations require buildings to be highly energy-efficient to reduce the building’s impact on the environment. However, the inherent characteristics of these new energy-efficient high-rise dwellings put them at higher risk of overheating. In addition, with the effect of climate change, the risk becomes even higher in the future. Though this problem could be addressed by the means of active cooling, doing so will increase the energy consumption of the building, confronting the core concept of the energy-efficient dwellings.Therefore, this thesis investigated passive and energy-efficient solutions for the overheating problem in energy-efficient high-rise dwellings of temperate climate. Design Guidelines helping designers in addressing the overheating problem in tall buildings were introduced. Then, by applying bundles of these solutions through redesigning the façade of a case study building effectivity of the purposed solutions were investigated for the Dutch context. The simulation results verified that overheating can still be prevented in the future by passive means. A proper combination of the thermal mass, heat dissipation and heat protection techniques with considering adaptivity in thermal comfort displayed that overheating can be prevented even by the end of the century.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Building Technology | Sustainable Desig