Name: Stella Brunoro Hoppe
Type: MSc dissertation
Publication date: 31/08/2016
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Cristina Engel de Alvarez | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Andréa Coelho Laranja | Co advisor * |
| Cristina Engel de Alvarez | Advisor * |
| Cynthia Marconsini Loureiro Santos | External Examiner * |
| Edna Aparecida Nico Rodrigues | Internal Examiner * |
Summary: The social, economic, and environmental crisis has signaled the need to seek more sustainable practices in urban design and planning processes. Regarding the environmental aspects, the search for energy efficiency buildings associated with the adoption of bioclimatic design strategies presents an appropriate way to achieve this objective. Therefore, daylighting plays an important role since it contributes to environmental comfort and reduces energy consumption. However, daylight availability depends on the urban geometry, which is usually a result of urban regulations set by parameters. Thus, the main objective of this research is to investigate the influence of urban legislation through its main urban parameters, with a focus on daylighting availability in the indoor environment, using the city of Domingos
Martins, Espírito Santo, as the study object. The main strategy for obtaining the data was running computer simulations with the software TropLux, using three types of standard CIE sky (3, 7, and 12). The study was divided into two stages, with the first one based on current urban occupation and the second on the areas of urban expansion and future subdivisions. The results confirmed that, although there is no specific method related to environmental comfort in the draft of the Master Plan, current municipal regulations contribute to increase daylighting availability in indoor environments. Furthermore, it was perceived that the previous legislation - the Building Code - was not detrimental to exploiting the potential of daylight inside buildings. It
could be noticed that the height of the buildings exerts the most influence on the variation of luminance levels and on the UDI percentage. However, the effect of obstructions can be reduced by adopting a greater road width, reinforcing the importance of the link between the height of the buildings and distances between them.
In addition, the importance of considering the climatic characteristics of each context, the solar orientation of roadways, and building typologies was also confirmed in defining urban indicators, as for each type of sky and solar orientation, a particular urban geometry has a better performance for the most efficient use for daylight, with this type of strategy to be replicated in other Master Plans and Building Codes.
Keywords: daylighting, urban legislation, computer simulation.
