Architecture Commons^™

Addressing Low Heat Pump Heating System Sales In The Uk, Ben Costelloe

Articles

The replacement of existing fossil fuel boilers with heat pumps is seen as a key measure in the decarbonisation of heating systems and addressing climate change. This policy however, is currently failing in many Western European states, particularly in the UK. The many reasons for this situation are examined. However, the age of UK housing stock and particularly the high number of dwellings built prior to the introduction of building insulation regulations in 1980, are key. To maintain the running cost of air source heat pumps competitive with those of the gas boilers they generally replace the heat pump lift …

A Stereotomic Struggle, Jim Roche

Articles

Stone in architecture has “territorial and political implications” as its use and designation impact the human rights of the indigenous population. The craft of stereotomy is not just bequeathed from the Crusaders or more recent imperial colonists but has a diverse blended history that is deeply ingrained in Palestinian built culture. Such theses inform the experimental work of Elial and Yusef Anastas, two brother architects who operate from Bethlehem what they term a counter hegemonic practice with the stated aim of “decolonising architecture”.

The Relationship Between Ventilation Rates In Schools And The Indoor Airborne Transmission Potential Of Covid-19, Seamus Harrington, Mark Mulville, Spyros Stravoravdis

Articles

The requirement for natural ventilation strategies in classrooms to perform in respect to both their inherent and adaptive capacity is necessary to mitigate the risk of transmission associated with infectious airborne pathogens such as COVID-19. This paper assesses the performance of ten classrooms considering (a) the designed versus actual ventilation capacity; (b) the probability of airborne disease transmission by unit time resulting from calculated ventilation rates and (c) the reduction of transmission risk associated with mask wearing by all occupants.

Monitored air changes per hour (ACH) range from 0.26–1.7, demonstrating that none of the classrooms meet designed ventilation rate whilst …

A Review Of Current Construction Guidelines To Inform The Design Of Rammed Earth Houses In Seismically Active Zones, David Thompson, Charles Augarde, Juan Pablo Osorio

Articles

Sustainability in the materials we use for construction is a prime concern, focusing on reducing the embodied energy and carbon footprints of the materials used. The cement used in concrete products is responsible for a significant proportion of Man's CO2 emissions and its production requires substantial energy input, as do fired clay products. For this reason, products formed from unfired earthen materials are of increasing interest and the current challenges include devising means of robust design for strength and to address durability concerns. One form of earthen construction that employs an in-situ method is rammed earth, and it is a …

The Heat Is On: The Collaborations, Capacities, And Management Style Required For The Establishment And Sustainability Of Community-Owned Renewable Energy District Heating Systems In Austria, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, And Scotland, Gerard Doyle

Articles

International reviews of countries’ progress at tackling climate change show that Ireland is making small levels of progress on tackling issues associated with climate change. This paper will highlight the pivotal role the State performs, both at national and local level, in creating the conditions essential for the establishment of community-owned renewable energy district heating systems. In particular, the State can provide funding for these initiatives to acquire the management and technical expertise essential for their establishment and maintenance. This paper will also examine a theoretical framework, referred to as capacity analysis, to explain the capacities that need to be …

Determining Realistic U-Values To Substitute Default U-Values In Epc Database To Make More Representative; A Case-Study In Ireland., Kumar Raushan, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

Articles

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are the foremost source of information on the energy performance of the EU’s building stock. Inherent in all EPC methodologies are trade-offs between reproducibility, accuracy, assessor expertise and costs. During an assessment, where accurate building data acquisition would be excessively invasive or costly, nationally specified default values are used.

Default values are necessarily pessimistic to; avoid a better-than-merited rating, enable homeowners to know the advantage of energetic refurbishment, encourage homeowners to record upgrades informing EPCs, and propel assessors to seek-out information to provide an accurate rating.

This work reviews default U-value use across Europe and the …

Building Performance - Societal Drive, Programme And Symposium, Joseph Little, Patrick Daly

Articles

Society is increasingly looking at the construction industry to mitigate the environmental crisis and solve the housing crisis through wholesale embrace of three broad sets of challenges. The MSc in Building Performance (Energy Efficiency in Design) (MSc BP(EED)) was created in 2017 to provide significant upskilling in the knowledge, skills, and software applications of building design professionals so that they can meet these challenges, while creating compliant, sustainable, super-low energy, new and renovated buildings. The delivery of the programme supports upskilling of employed building design professionals at Masters level, encouraging a minority to develop their capacity and interest in research …

Overview Of Hybrid Financial Instruments And Investment Leverage Enablers For Cultural Heritage Adaptive Reuse, Tracy Pickerill

Articles

Cultural heritage adaptive reuse investment strategies involve long-term, sometimes perpetual, investment horizons, which necessitate the integration of sustainable funding mechanisms. In order to achieve participatory circular human prosperity, the sustainable finance movement must re-evaluate investment leverage approaches including value creation models, the design of hybrid financial instruments, analytical decision-making frameworks,collaborative social enterprise structures, impact performance metrics and evolving mindsets.

In the context of this overview of financial and non-financial instruments, cultural heritage adaptive reuse activities include:

• Adaptive reuse of cultural built heritage structures

• Energy retrofit of cultural built heritage structures

• Protection and management of natural eco-systems;

• …

Unveiling Women’S Needs And Expectations As Users Of Bike Sharing Services: The H2020 Diamond Project, Andrea Gorrini, Rawad Choubassi, Federico Messa, Wafaa Saleh, Augustus Ababio-Donkor, Maria Chiara Leva, Lorraine D'Arcy, Francesco Fabbri, David Laniado, Pablo Aragon

Articles

Within the objectives of the H2020 DIAMOND project, the paper investigates women’s needs and expectations as users of the bike-sharing service managed by Syndicat Mixte Autolib et Velib Métropole in the territory of Paris Region-Petite Couronne (France). The paper presents a thematic literature review focused on gender inclusion in bike-sharing schemes. The proposed methodological approach is based on (i) Geographic Information Systems for the analysis of geolocated open datasets related to land, sociodemographic and mobility characteristics of the areas surrounding each docking stations. This was aimed at identifying a short list of suitable bike-sharing docking stations, which were further characterized …

Investment Leverage For Adaptive Reuse Of Cultural Heritage, Tracy Pickerill

Articles

This article tracks the design of a panoptic toolkit of complementary financial (grant and endowment, tax, debt and equity) and non-financial (regulation, real estate, risk mitigation and performance, capacity building, impact metric and digital network) instruments, designed to leverage capital investment and engender collaborative partnerships, to encourage investment capital to flow to cultural heritage adaptive reuse activities.

Relationship Between Participation And Social Inclusion, Louis Nwachi

Articles

Studies show that within most countries, there are generally many different socio-cultural, ethnic and religious groups and this diversity inevitably creates a level of inter-group tension, with income disparities, cultural differences, and intergroup segregation leading in turn to social exclusion. This paper sets out to develop a conceptual framework to examine the relationship between that participation and the social inclusion outcomes in the plan-making process. It addresses how social inclusion can relate to the plan-making process culturally, politically and institutionally, economically and socially with high level participation. In doing this, it adopts a case study approach using the Metropolitan Area …

The Magic And Metaphysics Of Shit :The Production Of Space And Digital Technology, David Capener

Articles

Reading Henri Lefebvre alongside Bernard Stiegler, this paper explores the changes that have taken place to the production of space in our age of digital technology. Lefebvre sensed the radical changes taking place in society through the implementation of computational technologies. He asked a prescient question: How is this space being produced? Lefebvre was unable to foresee the significant changes to the actual mechanics of the production of space brought about by the third industrial revolution. A thinker who does do this is Bernard Stiegler who is interested in how new digital technologies change memory via tertiary mnemotechnical devices – …

Using Blended Learning To Enhance The Experience Of Students In Built Environment Related Degree Programs, Philip Russell, Ruairi Hayden

Articles

Blended learning was introduced into the Construction Management programme in the School of Surveying and Construction Management at the Technological University Dublin in 2016. The module has traditionally been delivered by face-to-face teaching but online delivery has been facilitated using the Virtual Learning Environment (Blackboard) which has enabled a more blended approach to academic instruction. This innovative change to module provision has also provided an opportunity to enhance the student learning experience within the School through a more flexible teaching and learning environment. In this paper, the design, development and implementation of blended learning into a Construction Technology module is …

Demography Is Destiny: Strategic Planning And Housing In Ireland, Brian Hughes

Articles

The approach to this demographic-based paper on housing comprises a demand-led perspective to spatial planning and housing provision. The principal arguments are that end-use demand is driven by demographic growth and that successful planning is predicated on sustainable market-led implementation. Accordingly, the thrust and direction of Ireland’s National Planning Framework (NPF) must be driven by rational responses to population projections, its growthdriver of job creation, and anticipating the primary locations of future employment and for city-led end-use demand. Since 2006 Ireland’s potential to invest in capital formation has been handicapped by state economic constraints. In the intervening decade its Fixed …

Facing The Sun, Frank Prendergast, Muiris O'Sullivan, Ken Williams, Gabriel Cooney

Articles

December 2017 marked 50 years since archaeologist Michael J. O’Kelly first observed the solar illumination of the burial chamber in the Neolithic passage tomb at Newgrange during the period of the winter solstice. O’Kelly subsequently recorded direct sunlight entering Newgrange through the ‘especially contrived slit which lies under the roof-box at the outer end of the passage roof’ on 21 December 1969. The discovery of this historic phenomenon, dating back over 5,000 years, captured the public interest and imagination at that time and ever since. In this major article published in the Winter 2017 edition of Archaeology Ireland (date of …

Design And Planned Obsolescence. Theories And Approaches For Designing Enabling Technologies, Matteo Zallio, Damon Berry

Articles

We are currently living in a decade where smart objects and Internet of Things (IoT)-based devices are becoming part of daily life in different contexts. This research seeks to investigate and verify, by using a formal literature review methodology, the most visible aspects of technological development, within the Industry 4.0 and IoT scenario, in relation to the theories of the so called “Planned Obsolescence”.

This study covers a defined number of works on Design theories and practices on how to face the issue of built-in obsolescence of devices in the era of the Connected Devices. The majority of the works …

Embedding Life Cycle Costing In 5d Bim, Dermot Kehily, Jason Underwood,

Articles

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is the consideration of all ‘relevant’ costs and revenues associated with the acquisition and ownership of an asset. LCC has a number of relevant applications, these include project appraisal; facilities management; procurement and tendering and as a means to evaluate sustainable construction. Although these advantages are well recognised, the process is underutilised due to a number of documented barriers to adoption. Notably these include lack of accurate historical databases; the perceived complexity and time consuming nature of the calculations; lack of a standard LCC methodology, and that clients are not requesting LCC. The research presented is …

Delivering Design Fundamentals Using Relevant Learning Theories In The Delivery Of An Interior Design Project At Third Level, Tracey Dalton

Articles

This is a reflection on teaching practice, focussing on design process in a BA Honours in Design – Interior and Furniture, in Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). An intrinsic case study approach (Stake 1995) was taken for this research, which focussed on the use of the learning theories in the delivery of an undergraduate interior design project brief. A third year commercial office design project has been used to assess teaching and learning styles. This article will show that, in terms of delivery, in a typical third level interior design project in DIT, the process incorporates all of the learning …

Irish Bim Study 2017, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Articles

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) recently published its Global BIM Study as part of its BIM Innovation Capability Programme (BICP). The study sought to identify how BIM was being currently addressed in 27 countries across the globe. The study sought to identify the presence of three key ingredients in these countries:

1. Regulatory requirement for BIM

2. Champions driving BIM

3. Noteworthy publications

The report identified a number of recurring themes that would help to shape Ireland’s BIM programme. The report concluded that Ireland should adopt a programme of partnership between industry and the Irish Government in order to affect …

Compact Facility For Testing Steady And Transient Thermal Performance Of Building Walls, Aimee Byrne, Gerard Byrne, Anthony Robinson

Articles

Energy efficiency retrofit of buildings represents a key effort in reducing EU energy demand by 20% by 2020. However, predictions tend to overestimate savings by large percentages. The shortfall in savings can be attributed to incorrect predictive techniques, comfort takeback along with other behavioural and workmanship variables. Common predictive techniques related to heat loss tend to be based on the U-value of the building envelope. This paper presents the design of a more straightforward and compact version of the traditional Hot-Box apparatus (measures U-value) which instead determines the thermal resistance of samples of building envelope. U-value includes the need to …

Pivot Dublin: A Discussion On The Bid For Dublin To Become World Design Capital, Barry Sheehan, Ali Grehan

Articles

In this article, Barry Sheehan interviews Dublin City Architect, Ali Grehan, about PIVOT Dublin, the bid for World Design Council, how and why it came about, what happened to the bid and where PIVOT Dublin is now.

International Construction Measurement Standards (Icms) Explained, Charles Mitchell

Articles

In 2015 the United Nations wrote to various construction cost bodies around the world seeking some form of uniformity in the reporting of construction costs worldwide. The UN concern was the variance of reported statistics globally for similar projects even when local economic factors were taken into account.

As a result a meeting was held for interested parties in the offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C. in May 2015. This meeting became the inaugural meeting of what, today, is known as the International Construction Measurement Standards (ICMS) Coalition. The membership of the coalition is open to …

The Statistical Relevance And Effect Of Assuming Pessimistic Default Overall Thermal Transmittance Coefficients On Dwelling Energy Performance Certification Quality In Ireland, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton, Bernard Enright

Articles

In the EU, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued for dwellings whenever they are constructed, sold or leased. Where requiring data would be prohibitively costly, nationally applicable default-values for the thermal transmittance coefficients of the building envelope are employed. Use of such worst case default U-values ensure that a poor dwelling does not attain a better energy rating than is merited. In the absence of empirical data in Ireland thermal-default U-values, as in many other EU member states, are determined by the type and date of construction and then prevailing building codes. Using 463,582 dwellings representing 32% of the total …

Iron In The Soul, Noel Brady

Articles

This paper re-examines the iconic use of cruciform columns in the famous Barcelona Pavilion and the other ‘German’ projects of the architect Mies Van der Rohe. It extrapolates for the material itself to construct a theory about the meaning behind their design and iconography linking it to Shinkel and a coded national identify.

The Impact Of The Ambient Environment And Building Configuration On Occupant Productivity In Open-Plan Commercial Offices, Mark Mulville, Nicola Callaghan, David Isaac

Articles

Purpose

This paper sets out to understand the impact of the ambient environment on perceived comfort, health, wellbeing and by extension productivity in the workplace.

Design/methodology/approach

The research combined an occupant survey considering satisfaction with the ambient environment, health and wellbeing and workplace behaviour with the monitoring of ambient environmental conditions.

Findings

The paper demonstrates that the ambient environment can have a significant impact on occupant comfort, health and wellbeing, which in turn has implications for built asset performance. Within the ambient environmental factors considered, a hierarchy may exist with noise being of particular importance. Occupant behaviour within the workplace …

Energy-Saving Occupant Behaviour In Offices: Change Strategies, Mark Mulville, Keith Jones, Gesche Huebner, Joanne Powell-Grieg

Articles

As regulated energy consumption in buildings is reduced, the proportional importance of unregulated energy consumption increases. Reducing unregulated energy use in the commercial office requires an understanding of the factors that influence workplace behaviour. To date these factors have been assumed to be similar to those that influence behaviour in the home. However, the social dynamics of the workplace are different to those in the home. This study examines the degree to which theories of behaviour change generated largely in a domestic building setting could be used as the basis for designing interventions to reduce unregulated energy consumption in the …

Using Architecture Design Studio Pedagogies To Enhance Engineering Education, Shannon Chance, John Marshall, Gavin Duffy

Articles

Problem-Based Learning pedagogies that require high levels of inquiry and hands-on engagement can enhance student learning in engineering. Such pedagogies lie at the core of studio-based design education, having been used to teach architects since the Renaissance. Today, design assignments and studio-based learning formats are finding their way into engineering programs, often as part of larger movements to implement Student-Centered, Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pedagogies. This spectrum of pedagogies is mutually supportive, as illustrated in the University of Michigan’s SmartSurfaces course where students majoring in engineering, art and design, and architecture collaborate on wickedly complex and ill-defined design problems. In SmartSurfaces …

Thermal Energy Storage In Building Integrated Thermal Systems: A Review. Part 2. Integration As Passive System, Dervilla Niall, Sarah Mccormack, Philip Griffiths, Luisa Cabeza, Lidia Navarro, Albert Castell, Alvaro De Grazia, Maria Brown

Articles

Energy consumption trends in residential and commercial buildings show a significant increase in recent decades. One of the key points for reducing energy consumption in buildings is to decrease the energy demand. Buildings envelopes are not just a structure they also provide protection from outdoor weather conditions always taking into account the local climate. Thermal energy storage has been used and applied to the building structure by taking advantage of sensible heat storage of materials with high thermal mass. But in recent years, researchers have focused their studies on the implementation of latent heat storage materials that if well incorporated …

Knowledge Management: Collaboration Versus Concentration In Open Plan Workspaces, John Walsh

Articles

This paper looks at the design of open-plan offices, particularly in relation to the impact ofspatial design on different work-modes. It briefly examines the history of the open plan office, lookingat how today’s typical open-plan workplace has evolved. It considers how workplaces can besuccessfully designed to facilitate the seemingly conflicting requirements of supporting both collaboration and concentration

Lighting Design In Europe: Aligning The Demands For Lower Energy Usage With Better Quality., Kevin Kelly, James Duff

Articles

Lighting design is one of the fastest changing areas in building engineering. It has evolved significantly in recent years due to changing technology and demands for improved quality, better control, reduced energy and sustainability. This paper is an overview of what is happening in Europe and elsewhere and examines the literature to find that latest recommendations in the Code for Lighting issued by the SLL (Society of Light and Lighting) in the UK change previous demands for equal illuminance across a working plane to more specific and demanding criteria. There are recommendations for qualitative metrics and better distribution of light …