Adaptation of buildings to climate change through bioclimatic strategies, in Romania

Abstract

Climate change has become a fundamental concern for scientific researchers, architects and engineers, and requires improving the performance of the sectors responsible for city and building infrastructure. Burning fossil fuels to produce electricity and heat are the biggest cause of climate change and emissions and represent one third of total greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, buildings become responsible for improving the external environment, either by construction phases, rehabilitating process or by maintaining process. In Romania the building sector is the main contributor to gas emission and most of the residential multi-storeys constructions are buildings from the communist period built using standardized projects. In Romania one the main goals are the thermal rehabilitation of buildings and construction of apartments especially in the inner circle of the capital. However, the renovation measures are very basic and do not target actual/future EU legislation that imposes the Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) standard for the buildings. To overcome and to provide an alternative to both correct refurbishment and creation of new apartments the OVER 4 prototype was developed. These prototypes are modules of apartments where multiple bioclimatic strategies were implemented to minimize the energy consumption. Using the Passive House Project Planning (PHPP) the module was 3D created and simulated to reach the optimal architecture for both well-being of residents and the energy balance.