traditional persian architects used to employ the facade ornaments to illustrate cultural values and heritage. moreover, their approach for the adaptation of decorations to structural constructional requirements of buildings, called tectonics, could be considered as a cultural-artistic character itself. although these features were omitted when modernism and its independent facade principle pre...

Zero Budget Sustainability is a high potential service offered by Ploos Energieverlening. In this service, external financers invest in energy saving measures when the owner of the building lacks budget. The resulting savings are used to repay the investor. Currently, both financers and building owners lack confidence in the forecasted savings. It has been indicated that an independent scientif...

European directive EPBD (2003) and Kyoto protocol (1997) obligated the signer countries to implement an energy certification process of buildings in their laws. In Spain, the government established (RD 47/2007) two certification options: a simplified certification (that does not permit to obtain the best certification results) or a simulation process based on the Lider and Calener tools (DOE-II...

What are the opportunities and challenges for upscaling energy retrofit of heritage buildings? Heritage buildings comprise approximately 20% UK building stock challenging to sensitively because their values traditional construction. These may therefore be unconducive standard retrofitting approaches. Twelve case studies in examined. Three key findings presented together with implications retrof...

Open kitchens have been designed for many small residential units in tall buildings in Southeast Asia. This open design, without enclosing the kitchen with fire resisting walls has failed to comply with building fire safety codes in places like Hong Kong. Performance-based design was adopted to determine fire safety provisions. Gas cookers with flames are not allowed. Additional fire protection...