Performance evaluation of climate responsive buildings in India - Case studies from cooling dominated climate zones

Abstract India has a rich tradition of climate responsive architecture, incorporating several variations of passive design strategies that have been layered over time with the cultural, social and environmental context of the immediate geographical region. Designing climate responsive buildings is challenging, requiring an understanding of building physics, as well as the way buildings are designed, constructed and operated in a given cultural context. The process becomes more difficult with the ever-increasing comfort expectations. Unfortunately, it is easier to install air conditioners in a poorly designed building than to design a high-performing building to begin with. This paper is based on a study to evaluate the thermal performance of climate responsive buildings. We studied six modern institutional and office buildings in warm-humid, hot-dry and composite climate zones. Collectively, they incorporated a range of passive and hybrid design strategies, including various shading devices, courtyards, solar chimneys, cavity walls, various configurations of thermal mass, day and night-time ventilation, and evaporative cooling. We monitored each building for a period of one year and assessed their performance in terms of the behaviour of selected components, their overall response to the prevailing outdoor conditions. In addition to the measured variables, we compared performance using temperature gradients overlay on wall sections, heat maps and linear regression analysis to understand the relationship between the outdoor and indoor conditions to determine the nature of “climate responsiveness” of each building.