Course content

Sustainable buildings, among all features, are able to maintain or improve: (1) the quality of life, (2) adaptation with the local climate, (3) environment in the region, (4) energy efficiency. Sustainability in building is a way of thinking and decision-making that seeks to enhance the efficiency of resources and reduce the impacts of buildings on human health and the environment.

Smart buildings can help the user to adjust the equipment and energy systems in a building with the conditions. The technological advancement in recent years has enabled the realization of buildings with a high level of smartness. Today, people spend more than 80% of their time indoors. Therefore, a good indoor thermal comfort and environmental quality are essential for their well-being, health and productivity. In smart buildings, the users benefit from a building that can adjust the indoor conditions towards maximizing the user’s satisfaction and comfort, while minimizing the energy bills through smart energy management.

This course will introduce you the concepts and theories of smart and sustainable buildings. It will teach you methods and approaches to increase energy efficiency, environmentally friendly design, smartness level, and thermal comfort of buildings with a focus on the existing buildings. In this course you will learn how to apply the concept of sustainable building from the early stage of design for a new construction or a renovation, taking climate conditions into the account, and parametric study.

You will be familiar with the essential parameters for designing a building in a sustainable manner, indoor thermal comfort, and energy performance. Afterwards, common smart building solutions and strategies will be introduced. You will learn how to develop a building energy model, extract analyze weather data, perform dynamic energy simulation, and visualization technics in Rhino software using Honeybee/Ladybug.

Learning outcome

You will learn to:

• Analyze the local climate and select appropriate measures.
• Analyze the energy use of a building.
• Apply a stepped approach to find energy reducing measure.
• Perform parametric study for energy efficiency enhancement.
• What the determinant factors of thermal comfort and indoor air quality are.
• How the two main thermal comfort theories: Fanger's theory and the adaptive comfort theory, work.
• How to take thermal comfort into account in the design of buildings, components and energy systems.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, site visits, group work with digital platform, assignments, writing report, presentations.

Compulsory assignments

• Mandatory assignments

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

Building technology, Building information systems (Revit), Engineering introductory subject.

Course materials

Book: Zero-Energy Design, Author: Andy van den Dobbelsteen, Publisher: Boom, ISBN: 9789024400485

Others:

• Bygforskserien
• NS-EN 16798-1:201 Bygningers energiytelse Ventilasjon i bygninger Del 1: Inneklimaparametere for dimensjonering og vurdering av bygningers energiytelse inkludert inneluftkvalitet, termisk miljø, belysning og akustikk (Modul M1-6)
• ASHRAE STANDARD 55 - Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy
• Smart Readiness Indicator: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficient-buildings/smart-readiness-indicator_en
• Other relevant sources and standards.