FORM AND THE THERMAL ENVIRONMENT IN EXTERNAL SPACES

Abstract

The subject of this work is the design of housing layouts in hot arid regions with respect to the climatic stresses that affect thermal comfort of people using outdoor spaces.

A special reference is made to Cairo, a typical city in a hot-dry climate. Relevant aspects of computer aided design in architecture, the design of residential areas and their thermal characteristics are reviewed.

A steady state, upgradeable to dynamic unsteady-state, mathematical model of the thermal conditions in residential areas is developed which forms the basis of an evaluative computer program.

The thesis is structured as follows: chapter one is an introduction to the problem of external environment in Cairo. In chapter two. the literature survey of the design of housing layouts in present practice and CAAD systems is stated. Chapter three is concerned with the outdoors thermal system as a whole, elements of the climate and the microclimate particularly solar radiation and sky longwave radiation and their significance to human thermal comfort. Chapter four describes the proposed mathematical model for the evaluation of the performance of external spaces between buildings. Chapter five discusses the effect of some design parameters on the resulting thermal environment external to buildings as performed by the model. Chapter six contains discussion of the results of using the model for analyzing two housing layout proposals planned for residential areas in Egypt. Chapter seven concludes the study and contains suggestions for further work.