Design description:
Yarra Range Council design is a design in the ranges of Yarra that incorporates simple ideas to make homes comfortable places to live. The main and most significant idea of the design is to ensure environmental sustainability by reducing energy consumption and related generation of greenhouse gas emissions. The building is a single storey building designed to hold approximately 450 employees and councillors. The building is partitioned into eight key areas which include the reception and waiting region, office area, conference room and customer care area, library, catering and event area, store, end of trip facility, and staff kitchen. The inside area of the building is 7100 sqm. The frontage of the building is made up of a curtain wall system. The curtain wall system and precisely the non- structural outer walls are quite economical and occupants friendly. The walls are designed to ensure that the weather outside does not affect the temperatures inside the building there by keeping the occupants in. As such, the walls are made of frothy materials which reduces the cost of construction making the design more economical. Additionally, the curtain wall system allows the day light to penetrate deep in the building. The building is designed into an oval shape. As such, the inside area of the building is also designed into ovoid shape to match the overall design of the building. The reception and waiting areas are open places holding approximately 200sqm where customers can sit and access the day light. Unlike the reception area, the office area is closed and portioned into multiple offices with varying sizes. To hold a the highest probable number of employees and customers, the closed conference and customer care area is made up of 800 sqm of the total 7100 sqm of the indoor space. The building also contains a library which stands on a 500 sqm ground. To support the surrounding community in the location, the building provides a function and catering space of 650 sqm which can hold up to 400 seats. The storage and the staff kitchen areas are divided into 200 sqm each. The kitchen is meant for the staff and staffed with high appliances for the staffs to use. Outside the building are three supporting areas including event area which is 400 sqm, the bicycle and the car parking areas which can hold 50 and 200 spaces for bicycles and cars respectively. All the three areas assume the elliptical shape of the building.
Sustainability initiatives Overview
The Yarra Council Range project incorporates multiple innovative ideas with evident potential. The potential is seen through its ability to support its employees and councillors by providing sufficient space for their accommodation and by offering a spaces for the construction of the town hall and community municipal space. Additionally, the structure is self-sustaining as it holds a library, an art exhibit and youth center, as well as a childcare facility under one roof. All these facilities are readily available and essential for the community.
The project demonstrates sustainability achievement at varying levels. First, the building is made up of open spaces and glass atrium assuming the shape of a prism. These glasses allows transparency and caption of the open space of the building ensuring that all the activities undertaken in the building and those undertaking them are observable. The prism cover-ups ensure clear visibility of the building as people can observe the building form the outside. The shaped glass atriums are fitted proportionally to guarantee a sense of transparency in a layered form which ensures that the project achieves its sustainability objectives. The open-roofed entrances into the environment are composed of trilateral tapering airshafts that take-in fresh air from outside airshafts and subsequently cool the internal temperatures. Additionally, during the day the natural day light is filtered into the building through the layered glasses.
The environmental atriums of the building evidently demonstrates one of the crucial ways through which the building design achieves sustainability. The fundamental theme used in majority parts of the building is the theme of transparency that allows residents to view and explore differing architectural designs as well as their civil lives freely. Besides, the theme demonstrates the attractive, friendly and accessible nature of the building as the public can view it from a distance. The theme of transparence has also the role of representing and personifying the values of the community. The building is also a source of inspiration which is evident through its sustainability, openness, accessibility, and transparency. The environmental sustainability of this building is not limited to environmental atriums, the building incorporates additional sustainable resources such as Louvre of timber which measure the efficacy of the solar system. The structures also incorporates some features that regulate the air, allows different aeration modes, warm air filtration, and water filtration and recycling. Other features that ensure the sustainability of the building include geothermal cooling bores, selection of sustainable materials as well as establishment of green roofs and a wide solar panel array. The fact that most of the blocks in the building have contact to flowing reticulated water, gas and electricity is an indication of how sustainable the design is. Although there are some blocks which lack access to reticulated water, people can access water through septic systems and water tanks which makes it even more sustainable.
Passive design techniques
Introduction
The procedure of carrying out construction process is a very crucial activity. Due to this, the engineers need to have in mind and include different elements that are needed to make the process effective. Thermal comfort, natural light, ventilation space and building fabrics are some of the elements that the engineers should consider. This study hence will look into these mentioned elements and show their importance in the building process.
Buildings need to have fresh air circulation within. This is to allow fresh air into the building premise. Proper ventilation should be used in buildings. Natural ventilation is one of the options that is effective. It constitutes using the buoyancy of the wind and natural forces to circulate fresh air within the buildings. Ventilation of the building has lots of advantages, it removes bad smell from the building and increase oxygen supply which is essential for the breathing process. it regulates heat distribution in the building thus making the environment comfortable. Despite it regulating the temperature to the required degree, moisture control is not standardized, thus proper way should be used when installing natural ventilation in humid areas. As it diminishes the dimensions of the temperature inside the structure, it additional balances the weight of the wind and the stream of the outside air into structures through the windward side (Walker, 2016). stack effect is not usable during summer time, this is because the temperatures inside cannot be more than the temperatures on the outside. Natural ventilation varies according to seasons, during winter, it is applied to remove harmful gases inside the buildings while in summer, the natural wind is used to adequate fresh air.
Air inside the building has got difference in density, this is known as buoyancy and relies on the humidity and the temperature. Under the same level of humidity, the dry air is more immense than the cold air, when buildings are occupied, people produce heat from their bodies, due to this, humid forces the heated air to rise and flee through the ventilation spaces and though the ceilings. The rooms can assimilate new discuss through ventilation which is humble fitted, and it replaces the air that had prior leaked through the roof. Engineers are supposed to deliberate nearby vegetation, encompassing buildings, and geology amid developments because they can specifically influence the speed and impact of the wind that.
Fabric building
This is a design which is applied during the construction of ceilings, entries like the doors and the windows and the floors. The main purpose is to control the amount of sounds. It can more over capture clamor and transmission within the building. The texture encourages control of dampness, temperature and mugginess within the building. The texture can also diminish prerequisites like cooling and warming and it downsizes and dispenses with their requirements. The energy related capacities of the building’s texture can be progressed for productivity. The vitality sparing exercises are as it were productive when they are arranged for the reclamation of the building, or they can be conducted as self-sustained ventures. They can accomplish the energy saving capacities of the building. A few of the materials utilized for a building to end up feasible incorporate squander materials that are reused.
Thermal comfort
The body requires moderate thermal condition in order to feel comfortable. This implies that the buildings need to be moderate in terms of heat. Currently, most buildings are energy prurient so that the rooms are able to maintain the comfort of its occupants (Verma et al., 2017, p. 1). Human bodies produce heat which is influenced by the place they are in, type of clothes that they wear, their metabolic rates and the rate of humidity in the region. The engineers should ensure that they range the room temperatures between 20 to 22 degrees in order to achieve thermal comfortability. This is because the rate at which human bodies emit heat energy varies for instance, during cold seasons and during warm seasons. Humans produce lots of heat during cold seasons and in order to maintain their comfort, people should ensure that they allow the heat to escape through the type of clothing they wear and the ventilation process of the buildings in which they occupy. Windows can also be a method of controlling the thermal condition of the rooms, fans are also used, heaters and the sun shades.
Daylighting
Daylighting is a way of regulating the quantity of light from the sun and concentrating it to the interior of the building with the main aim being able to save on the electricity bill. Windows and translucent roofs are some of the ways through which this is made possible. This technique involves use of diffused, reflected or direct light from the sun. The advantageous part of using daylighting is that it relaxes the brain and gives out the natural environment to the occupant of the building. The sun emits adequate light during the day, this sunlight is then felt adequately by the walls and the floors, the windows also allow entry of sunlight into the building. The sun gives an expansive sum amid the day, and the reason of a building’s insides walls is to gather a scatter it instead of limiting it. This technique has been related with various advantages for the constructions that aims at necessity to acquire certificate of the LEED.
The leading aim of daylighting is its capacity to diminish the power cost for inside lighting of buildings (Ander, 2016). In the case of business buildings, daylighting intensifies the efficiency of the dwellers. Research has proven that those dwellers using the daylighting are more profitable than those who don’t utilize it. Inhabitants using these buildings at daytime have low operating costs because their cost of electricity is reduced. In offices, rare sick offs are experienced due to the technique. These lights are also beneficial as it helps the creators to have spaces with are appealing and due to this, the dwellers find this attractive to use.
Conclusion
When constructing buildings, comfort of the occupants should be considered. Natural lighting, thermal comfort, fabric building and natural ventilation are some of the ways through which this is achieved. Designers are supposed to consider these aspects as some of them are beneficial in reducing operating costs such as costs for electricity. Constructors should ensure that they consider these aspects because during seasons like winter and summers, the body temperatures are controlled to bring comfortability.