Hvac | Tag | ArchDaily

Bringing the Outside In: Life-Size Terrariums and Other Ways to Exhibit Nature in European Apartment Buildings

December 06, 2023

As the temperature drops in the Northern Hemisphere, cold outdoor spaces are overcome with frost, ice, and snow, and we find ourselves rushing from one heated indoor environment to the next, less willing or less able to stop and appreciate the natural world around us.

Apart from dragging a spruce or fir tree inside and dressing it up in yuletide costume, we tend to leave the real natural world to its own seasonal devices until it reemerges in Spring. However, by inviting the positive effects of plant life into our homes, we can improve both our mental health and the air we breathe by filling them with peace and joy all year round, not just at Christmas.

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Cooling and Energy Efficiency: A New Era in Building Design

October 31, 2023

The world has just witnessed the hottest months in recorded history, and the outlook is far from optimistic. Rising temperatures are driving greater cooling demands, threatening to trigger a vicious cycle of higher electricity use and carbon emissions. In a planet simultaneously facing unprecedented urbanization and a climate crisis, the intersection of building energy efficiency and cooling technologies has never been more crucial.

What Are Clerestory Windows and Their Spatial Advantages in 24 Projects

August 16, 2023

Not nearly as complex an architectural typology as the word suggests, a ‘clerestory’ is a simple – if lexically loose – a portmanteau of ‘clear’ and ‘story’. Denoting a section of the wall that contains windows or cavities above eye level. The word is often assumed to have a religious context. Clerestories historically appeared at the upper levels of Roman churches, Hebrew temples, and early Christian architecture after all. And the earliest references we have to the feature come from religious texts.

Today, religious structures are often typified by the light their high windows allow to stream in, both figuratively and literally, from a higher source. At the CES Chapel in Taiwan, for example, ‘light diffuses through the glass clerestory and brightens the apse throughout the day,’ explains JJP Architects & Planners, about an interior design concept driven by natural lighting, ‘the chapel is filled with a spiritual aura, with a bright cross projected deep into the space.’

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Empowering Thermal Comfort Through Smartphone Technology in HVAC Systems

July 06, 2023 | Sponsored Content

Heating and cooling buildings have always been two of the most important challenges in ensuring indoor user comfort. At a biological level, our bodies generate heat through metabolism, a physicochemical process. And although the human body has temperature regulation mechanisms, such as sweating and vasodilation, sometimes we need additional help to achieve thermal comfort. Therefore, since ancient times, traditional strategies have been sought to help achieve this, and many have been adapted to their historical and material contexts.

Back to Basics: Natural Ventilation and its Use in Different Contexts

June 23, 2021

Automation is everywhere around us - our homes, furniture, offices, cars, and even our clothing; we have become so accustomed to being surrounded by automated systems that we have forgotten what life was like without them. And while automation has noticeably improved the quality of interior spaces with solutions like purified air and temperature control, nothing compares to the natural cool breeze of mother nature.

But just like everything else in architecture, there is no one size fits all; what works in Tanzania cannot work in Switzerland or Colombia. This is due to several reasons, such as the difference in wind direction, average temperature, spatial needs, and environmental restrictions (or lack thereof). In this article, we take a look at natural ventilation in all its forms, and how architects have employed this passive solution in different contexts.

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SkyCool Systems Develops Technique to Cool Buildings Using the Coldness of Outer Space

March 23, 2016

Although many have come to question our unwavering devotion to hermetically sealed buildings, most construction budgets are still dominated by costs associated with HVAC and other quality of life standards. With some questioning the efficacy of such practices, and others taking fault with the costs, there is now immense incentive to create new technologies and techniques that could allow us to retain the benefits of such climate control without the environmental and monetary cost they currently carry.

Now a young company known as SkyCool Sytems, founded by Stanford University researcher Aaswath Raman, has developed a cooling method capable of ejecting excess heat out of the atmosphere in the form of infrared rays. Read on to find out how it works.

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