Browsing by Author "ANTONY, ALAN GEORGE"

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    OPTIMIZING THE FAÇADE SKIN OF AN EXISTING OFFICE BUILDING WITH BIOMEMITIC DESIGN SOLUTIONS
    (The British University in Dubai (BUiD), 2018-08) ANTONY, ALAN GEORGE
    As a city, Dubai has a vision for sustainable development, with goals that are outlined till the year 2050. In this city, buildings consume 80% of the energy generated locally. In line with this initiative, local government authorities have launched multiple campaigns in educating the public about saving or reducing energy consumption as end users. The Dubai municipality has updated their building permit guideline as well. They now include a green building rating system, forcing, new buildings to comply with sustainable practice & development. However, there seems to be very minimal effort done to reduce the energy consumption of existing buildings. This is true from both a municipal and building management level. Because of various challenges, thus far, most of the improvements to existing buildings have been cosmetic, for eg. changing existing light fixtures to LED fixtures to reduce energy consumption. A more holistic approach is needed to significantly reduce cooling loads. A bulk of energy consumption within an existing building occurs via the HVAC systems, especially in their operation during the summer months. Upon study of existing research, addressing the building skin has shown to be the most effective starting point, for energy savings. The office building typology was selected for further study. This is because; the typology is used consistently, during daylight hours, for 77% of the year. Thus, treating this typology with an efficient building skin, promises to have significant savings. There is also a strong supply of existing office buildings within Dubai. If a building skin can be developed to reduce energy consumption significantly, the results can be compounded, causing the city, to save a significant amount of energy, Biomimetic skins have shown considerable promise to create effective and efficient building skins via past research. The aim of this dissertation is to use, principles from biomimicry to generate various simulations, targeting both the layers and form of the existing building skin. These simulations will build on each other in a cumulative effect & will eventually leave us with an end result of a highly efficient building skin. The variables to be compared will be limited to the change of energy loads (cooling and heating) and the concurrent effect on the indoor LUX values.