Speaker
Description
With rising temperatures and the accelerating pace of global climate change, a host of environmental challenges have emerged, demanding urgent and innovative solutions. Carbon-neutral urban planning and design have become imperative to mitigate the adverse effects of these challenges. As cities and buildings are major consumers of secondary energy, they play a critical role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Urban morphological elements, as fundamental components of urban design, significantly influence building energy performance, thereby impacting overall carbon emissions.
Previous studies have investigated how urban morphological elements affect building energy consumption across different climate zones, aiming to design low-carbon or even zero-energy urban blocks. However, while pursuing lower energy consumption, the external environment created by certain urban forms is often overlooked. Importantly, under the same floor area ratio (FAR), different urban forms can produce drastically different qualities of external public spaces. These variations in public space quality profoundly affect the experiences of urban users, particularly pedestrians, and have implications for spatial equity. Commonly studied urban morphological indicators—such as density, FAR, and building height—fail to fully capture the spatial characteristics of public spaces shaped by urban design.
Addressing this critical gap, this study adopts an urban design perspective to identify morphological indicators that account for public space quality, based on a review of urban design guidelines and practices. Three key indicators—alignment ratio, effective street length, and street space density—are proposed to better understand the relationship between urban morphology, energy performance, and public space quality. To evaluate these indicators, a comparative study is conducted using a set of urban forms with identical FAR but varying public space configurations. Simulations are performed using Rhino, Grasshopper, and the Ladybug tool suite, under consistent climatic and environmental conditions, to assess the building energy performance of each configuration.
The findings reveal that certain urban morphological typologies can achieve a balance between low energy consumption and high-quality public spaces. By linking energy simulation results with public space metrics, the study identifies design strategies that harmonize these two objectives.
This research emphasizes the importance of performance-driven design in creating low-carbon urban blocks and offers valuable guidance for urban designers aiming to optimize both building energy efficiency and the quality of external urban spaces. By integrating these considerations into early design stages, the study provides a reference framework for achieving more sustainable and equitable urban environments.
| Keywords | low-carbon urban design; building energy consumption; performance driven design |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
