Urban built context as a passive cooling strategy for buildings in hot climate

This paper presents a systematic evaluation of the impact of the built urban context on the cooling energy performance of buildings subjected to extreme hot weather conditions. The proposed approach combines building energy modeling with an extensive parametric variation and statistical analysis scheme. It provides a direct quantification of inter-building shading on energy performance, with an emphasis on the cooling demand patterns for buildings of different types and sizes. Results show that the combined effects of urban context height, distance, and orientation can lead to significant reductions in cooling demand, reaching up to 26% for total cooling loads and 24% for peak cooling loads. The observed savings are particularly notable for residential buildings, making them an ideal target for urban development strategies that aim to leverage inter-building shading effects for energy conservation purposes. Moreover, an in-depth analysis of peak loads illustrates how the density and compactness of the urban form can be used as passive design strategies to reduce the load, and hence, the size of air conditioning systems. Finally, the paper explores how to translate the gained knowledge to design guidelines, bridging the gap between theory and practice. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.