Climatic design as a tool to create comfortable, energy-efficient and environmentally wise built environment (Tripoli-Lybia)

Contemporary Libyan architecture has rarely recognized the local climate or renewable energy issues and these subjects are neglected or rarely studied. However, Libyan local vernacular architecture includes traditional solutions that have been tested over centuries, providing passive design for low energy consumption as well as creating architecture related to the local environment.This research aims to provide guidelines for architectures to consider how to incorporate climatic design in creating architecture related to the local environment that should provide more sustainable solutions in hot climate regions. The study uses the concept of sustainable development to offer a holistic perspective to establish a body of knowledge on passive climatic design that could benefit architects when designing future housing. According to this general understanding, this research project focuses on the interrelationship between passive climatic design and vernacular architecture in such situations. It aims to look at the theoretical and experimental studies that have demonstrated the usefulness of passive climatic design techniques in context with the cooling of buildings in hot regions in order to establish climatic design guidelines using Tripoli, Libya as the case example.The guidelines are developed for housing design, and take on board the opinions of end users and professionals as well as understanding building performance from the climatic point of view. Both deductive and inductive approaches have been selected where theoretical strategies are first confirmed from the existing literature which are then investigated using an array of appropriate methods (questionnaire, interviews and focus group as well as sampling the internal temperatures inside selected case study houses) to examine the thermal comfort in both vernacular and contemporary housing. Results are merged to produce guidelines that can help architects in terms of using climatic design principles in future housing in hot climate regions