Abstract:
Contemporary societies have shifted their focus towards sustainable and resilient public buildings, transcending the institutional and functional role of the physical structures. School buildings, despite the high impact on setting everyday standards of comfort, remain the second highest expenditure of municipalities' total running costs. The impact on well-being and improved knowledge along with the average lifespan of school buildings, imply the necessity to pay special attention to its expected performance since the early design phase, as the main influencer on the building performance. The building geometry, the most salient design characteristic in a building, has substantial influence on its energy performance. Studies on the impact of school buildings morphology are rare but present. However, there is a literature gap regarding the influence of specific climate contexts on the performance of open-schools. Hence, the present research aims to contribute to estimating the impact of early design evaluation of open-school building morphology on energy performance in the climatic contexts of Southeast Europe. Design variables including building shape and orientation are selected for a comprehensive whole-building energy performance analysis. The results highlight the efficiency of the method in reducing a maximum of 33.7 % of the annual energy demand and in increasing a maximum of 1.15 °C the thermal comfort in classrooms by means of geometry optimization. Suggestions are made on the appropriateness level of each typology for each studied climatic context. The Design Builder interface version 6 for Energy Plus is selected to develop the simulations in different climate contexts of Southeast Europe. A
fundamental framework towards early design decision-making stages is generated through the performed simulation results.
