energy design resources design brief D E S I G N F O R Y O U R C L I M AT E By understanding climatic conditions that are specific to a project s location design teams Summary are able to develop climate Sun land and water interact in complicated ways throughout each day and throughout the year and the result is what we responsive building designs The commonly refer to as weather These interactions produce daily as well as seasonal temperature humidity and wind patterns that can vary substantially between locations in close geographic result is a building that utilizes less energy and provides a proximity California in particular has many diverse climate characteristics that occur across the state Yet many architects high quality and comfortable and engineers develop their design strategies for new buildings without full consideration of the impact of regional and site environment for the occupants specific climate conditions Climate responsive design is a strategy that seeks to take advantage of the positive climate attributes of a particular location while minimizing the effects of attributes that may impair comfort or increase energy requirements Designers who strive to develop comfortable low energy buildings can enjoy the benefits of climate responsive design by considering five basic points in the course of designing new commercial buildings 1 Understand climate zones and microclimates 2 Understand the basic physiology of human thermal comfort 3 Control the sun to reduce loads and enhance visual comfort 4 Use thermal mass to improve comfort and efficiency 5 Select space conditioning strategies that are climate responsive contents Introduction 2 Understand Climate Zones and Microclimates 5 Understand Human Thermal Comfort 8 Control the Sun 15 Use Thermal Mass 21 Select Space Conditioning Strategies 24 Conclusions 28 For More Information 29 Notes 31 Introduction In California s commercial new construction market emphasis is placed on minimizing the time and effort required for new buildings to be built and occupied As a result many owners and developers favor simple building shapes along with construction methods and materials that facilitate an assembly line approach to building Unfortunately the efficiency of this approach is usually achieved at the expense of other important building characteristics namely comfort and energy efficiency Stated another way owners and developers are producing buildings that are designed independent of climatic conditions instead of designing for their particular climate According to the California Energy Commission CEC the state is officially divided into sixteen climate zones The climatic characteristics of a building s particular location temperature humidity wind and sun can either help or hinder the designer s efforts to provide comfort for building occupants A building with a climate responsive design includes design features and building systems that allow it to take advantage of all that its climate has to offer be it a cool coastal breeze or a hot dry summer A What is Climate Responsive Design If the old adage If life gives you lemons make lemonade were modified to express the underlying philosophy of building that has been designed in the context of its prevailing climatic conditions will usually have lower operating costs yet achieve higher occupant satisfaction than buildings where such considerations have not been made What is Climate Responsive Design climate responsive design it would read Climate responsive design seeks to create inherently comfortable as follows buildings that require minimum energy input Such buildings take If your climate gives you scorching advantage of regional climatic characteristics that can help with daytime relative comfort and efficiency while minimizing the impact of any humidity and wide daily temperature characteristics that may impair performance Climate responsive swings thoughtfully design your building design may be thought of as the ultimate expression of building with evaporative cooling nighttime efficiency achieving what we desire a comfortable building ventilation and high thermal mass with the lowest possible energy input page 2 temperatures low design for your climate To gain a better understanding of this concept it is worthwhile to understand some of the events that influenced current architectural and urban design practices In the era before refrigerated air conditioning was available climate responsiveness was an essential building feature because there was no other reasonable way to maintain acceptable temperatures within the building Architects and engineers employed imaginative schemes to bring daylight and ventilation into all parts of a building in order to provide a comfortable Figure 1 Climatically responsive building Designed by Architect George H Wyman in 1893 about 30 years before the advent of air conditioning for human comfort the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles provides excellent natural lighting and ventilation to occupants utilizing a large enclosed atrium Taken on the floor of the atrium the photo is looking straight up at the glazed roof working environment In those times it was essential to create inherently comfortable buildings Figure 1 That all changed in 1906 when a young employee at Buffalo Forge Company by the name of Willis Carrier obtained a patent for his Apparatus for Treating Air that he designed several years before to regulate environmental conditions at a Brooklyn printing plant This printing plant was encountering problems because changes in temperature and humidity caused the dimensions of their printing paper to change resulting in misalignment of printed text It took nearly 20 more years for the idea of keeping people cool and dry and not just rolls of paper to catch on when the J L Hudson Department Store in Detroit Michigan installed three centrifugal chillers and shoppers began Source Regional History Center University of Southern California 1961 to flock to the air conditioned store Though the Great Depression and World War II slowed the growth of air conditioning for non industrial purposes the inward and outward appearance of buildings was irrevocably altered in the post war era as the building community wholeheartedly embraced this new technology With the advent of air conditioning it was no longer essential to provide natural ventilation and daylight in building designs the ability to extract heat from all parts of a building
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