Improving Indoor Air Quality in Aged Care Ventres using a supplementary ventilation system
Several studies demonstrate the importance of indoor air quality on health, well-being and productivity of occupants. However, much of the research on indoor environments focuses on adult workers in offices, students in school settings, and typical residential buildings. A significant proportion of Australia’s population consist of old people in aged care homes who are vulnerable…
Impact of the courtyard on the energy performance of conditioned office buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh
The challenge for building design is to maintain comfort inside while the weather outside changes unexpectedly. Therefore, air conditioning (AC) has become an essential component in office buildings as it provides a comfortable indoor environment while also being the primary source of energy consumption growth. Recent studies have emphasized the application of courtyard as a…
Impact of existing building air-conditioning retrofit on cost, COVID-19 transmission and energy
The BREATH (Building Retrofit for Efficiency, Air quality, Thermal comfort and Health) project was a research pilot led by the City of Melbourne in partnership with Cbus Property, the University of Melbourne, AG Coombs, SEED engineering, AURECON and Westaflex. It was a rapid retrofit project that tested various air conditioning and ventilation retrofit options with…
For a philosophy of good construction: a learning experience
The knowledge of construction techniques handed down its wealth of experience through manuals and codes of practice for a long time. The manuals of the past not only supported the construction through technical information but also expressed a ‘philosophy’ of good construction by transferring construction principles and rules into the project. The themes of good…
Extending the life: Deep energy retrofit analysis for classroom blocks in New Zealand
The New Zealand Ministry of Education owns 33,000 classrooms, many of which possess low levels of insulation and depend on openable windows for ventilation. Extending the life of existing buildings reduces the number of buildings that end up in landfills and the embodied carbon embodied in the construction of a replacement classroom. The aim of…
Evaluating possible options for reusing borer-infested post-demolition timber in New Zealand
Overconsumption contributes to irreversible environmental damage. The issues arise from resource extraction, processing, and disposal. Therefore, there is an urgency to develop techniques and strategies to keep materials in the loop for longer. Reusing reclaimed building materials could be a pivotal method to reduce overall material waste and decrease the need for new extraction, looking…
Emerging collaborative design platforms and the future of architectural education and practice
In 2017, Susskind and Susskind said that the future of the professions would move beyond the comfort of routine task automation and towards transformative re-configuration with an increased focus on demystification, democratization, and decomposition. At the same time, the rise of digital ‘superusers’, highlights the critical role of transdisciplinarity if the design professions are to…
Embodied greenhouse gas emissions of structural systems for tall buildings: is there a premium for plan irregularity?
In mitigating the effects of climate change, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been proposed as a design tool to facilitate the choice of structural typologies, materials and floor plan layouts for tall buildings. Existing studies that use LCA to compare alternative structural systems for tall buildings adopt regular floor plans, whereby their centres of mass,…
Electricity demand analysis for solar PV houses: Polyvalent heat pumps coupled with water storage tanks
As a result of the increasing adoption of rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in homes and the mismatch between peak residential load and peak harvested solar energy, a considerable percentage of harvested energy fails to be consumed in homes, resulting in low PV self-consumption. This is further compounded by recent rules and limits, which control…
Drivers for adaptive behavior in Human-Building Interaction: measuring the factors motivating room modifications for personal comfort
With the ubiquity of sensors, researchers contributing to the emerging field of Human-Building Interaction (HBI) have started incorporating embedded technologies to monitor energy conservation indoors. Automated systems to increase building performance are now more common as the algorithms to predict the characteristics of the room environment increase in accuracy. And yet, energy optimisation in buildings…
Development of a novel method to establish the hygrothermal water vapour resistance factor of construction materials for moisture management design of buildings
For nearly a century, it has been acknowledged that the nexus of envelope design, material choices and interior conditioning patterns can lead to surface and interstitial mould and condensation. Both of which affect building durability and occupant health. In Australia, the development of hygrothermal building regulations has been deferred based slow, which has resulted manufacturers…
Developing a prefabricated timber and straw-bale wall panel for Aotearoa New Zealand
Making greater use of materials that sequester carbon, like timber and straw, is one way of reducing carbon emissions in the construction industry. In Aotearoa New Zealand building with straw bales has been perceived as a fringe technique, undertaken mostly in rural locations and often by owner-builders. For the past twenty years, however, and in…
Developing a methodology to assess potential overheating of houses in Darwin
The inability of the home environment to avoid overheating can result in discomfort and may have adverse effects on occupants’ health and wellbeing. Overheating is defined as the extent to which a space exceeds an upper threshold of an acceptable thermal condition. Although identified as a potential issue, assessing a house design for overheating is…
Designing for extreme weather impacts on buildings
In line with climate projections, extreme weather events have increased in Australian cities both in number and severity. Such events include heavy rainfall along the east coast, cyclone events along the north-west coastline and in far north Queensland, bushfires in the southeast and heatwaves across the continent. Current scientific modelling provides medium to high confidence…
Data quality assurance in Environmental Product Declaration Electronic Database: An integrated Clark-Wilson Model, machine learning and blockchain conceptual framework
Construction materials environmental product declaration (EPD) is becoming an essential data source for whole building life cycle assessment (WBLCA). In recent years, EPD programme operators have begun to digitalise the existing EPDs into a more useful data format through an electronic database. Therefore, it is essential to ensure the quality of EPD inserted in this…
Creating resilience through empowering Self-Build Strategies in a Myanmar refugee camp
Currently, around 82 million people are displaced globally, and refugees are among the most vulnerable and in need of support. Around 1.1 million refugees from Myanmar are situated in large refugee camps between Myanmar, Thailand and Bangladesh, many living in such conditions for up to 30 years. Long-term design solutions are needed to solve the…
Comparison of embodied greenhouse gas emissions data from environmental product declarations and the EPiC database: implications for material selection
Architects and other construction industry professionals are increasingly seeking to reduce the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of construction projects. To support this goal, reliable and comprehensive data is needed on material performance. There are various sources of this data currently being used, including Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), and material life cycle inventory (LCI) databases,…
Circular economy software tools at the material and product level: A scoping review
There has been an increasing interest towards measuring the environmental performance of circular economy (CE) strategies. To this end, a wide range of software tools (STs) has been developed, each one with different guidelines that rely on specific indicators and approaches to measure the environmental performance of CE strategies. An overview of this topic is,…
Can we design buildings within planetary boundaries? An exploration into using a top-down benchmarking approach for embodied carbon
The way we build, occupy, and dismantle architecture contributes heavily to the global problem of climate change. Accounting for the embodied emissions from buildings is just as important as measuring operational emissions. It’s widely recognised that including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) during design can inform decisions to reduce emissions. However, it is difficult to complete…
Augmented Geelong: Digital technologies as a tool for place – A case of regional town of Geelong
To address global competitiveness, contemporary cities are investing into creating and establishing a unique brand identity by revitalisation and resurrection of the past using heritage structures that sets them apart from other locations. In this context, application of digital technologies has unravelled new opportunities in terms of augmenting the experience of space. However, despite their…
An investigation into quality management systems and factors affecting construction productivity: The New Zealand residential construction industry
Poor construction productivity is described as a systemic issue globally. In New Zealand (NZ), it is known as a substantial and enduring socio-economic problem. Among the numerous factors, quality is often correlated as a contributory factor to improving construction productivity. However, yet explicitly explored in the NZ residential construction sector as a more comprehensive strategic…
An architecture of inclusion: Can the profession adapt to the diversity of design demanded by people with a disability?
From the 1840s, Australia encouraged the committing of people with disabilities to institutions and asylums. By the 1970s the preference was to house people in group homes—domestic in scale but still institutional in design and regulation. Consequently, knowledge of designing for people with disabilities within the architectural profession was low and teaching the design skills…
Adaptable and scalable housing for Australian households and stages of life
The housing sector in Australia continues to be dominated by construction methods based on a linear take-make-waste model: an unsustainable approach for using materials on a planet of finite natural resources and increasing population. Demand on materials for new house construction is exacerbated by the fact that contemporary Australian houses are the biggest in the…
Active transportation in future urban environment
Transportation has become one of the integral components of cities that directly affect several aspects of human life, such as economy, communication, and environment. Cities are facing growing challenges and demand for urban transportation due to population growth, which causes harmful impacts on living conditions. Thus, authorities are seeking solutions to improve the urban environment…
A study on roaming behaviour of crowd in public space with the analysis in computer vision and Agent-based simulation
People-flow in densely populated modern cities is a non-negligible factor to consider during urban space design. However, in the early phase of design, architects mainly deal with the static states of the human body. Other factors, such as duration and environment, should be considered when analysing crowd behaviour. The common methods for design presentation are…