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Bioclimatic Design

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Sustainable Built Environments

Definitions

Bioclimatic design – combining “biology” and “climate” – is an approach to the design of buildings and landscape that is based on local climate. The approach was promoted in a series of professional and popular publications in the 1950s [1, 2]. In using the term “bioclimatic,” architectural design is linked to the physiological and psychological need for health and comfort. In adopting bioclimatic approaches, the designer endeavors to create comfort conditions in buildings by understanding the microclimate and resulting design strategies that include natural ventilation, daylighting, and passive heating and cooling. The premise of bioclimatic design is that buildings utilize natural heating, cooling, and daylighting in accordance with local climatic conditions.

Resilient designis an extension of bioclimatic design. It adds precautionary measures to provide health and safety to prepare for natural disasters, including extreme storms and flooding of inland watersheds and...

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Abbreviations

Absolute humidity:

Absolute humidity is defined as the weight of water vapor contained in a unit volume of air. Typical units are pounds of water per pound of dry air or grains of water per cubic foot. Absolute humidity is also known as the water vapor density (Dv).

Celsius temperature (°C):

Celsius temperature (°C) refers to temperatures measured on a scale devised in 1742 by Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer. The Celsius scale is graduated into 100 units between the freezing temperature of water (0°C) and its boiling point at normal atmospheric pressure (100°C) and is, consequently, commonly referred to as the centigrade scale.

Dew-point temperature (DPT):

Dew-point temperature (DPT) is the temperature of a surface upon which water vapor contained in the air will condense into liquid water. Stated differently, it is the temperature at which a given quantity of air will become saturated (reach 100% relative humidity) if chilled at constant pressure. It is thus another indicator of the moisture content of the air. Dew-point temperature is not easily measured directly; it is conveniently found on a psychrometric chart if dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures are known.

Dry-bulb temperature (DBT):

Dry-bulb temperature (DBT) is the temperature measured in air by an ordinary (dry bulb) thermometer and is independent of the moisture content of the air. It is also called “sensible temperature.”

Fahrenheit temperature (F):

Fahrenheit temperature (F) refers to temperature measured on a scale devised by G. D. Fahrenheit, the inventor of the alcohol and mercury thermometers, in the early eighteenth century. On the Fahrenheit scale, the freezing point of water is 32°F and its boiling point is 212°F at normal atmospheric pressure.

Humidity:

Humidity is a general term referring to the water vapor contained in the air. Like the word “temperature,” however, the type of “humidity” must be defined.

Relative humidity (RH):

Relative humidity (RH) is defined as the percent of moisture contained in the air under specified conditions compared to the amount of moisture contained in the air at total saturation at the same (dry-bulb) temperature. Relative humidity can be computed as the ratio of existing vapor pressure to vapor pressure at saturation, or the ratio of absolute humidity to absolute humidity at saturation existing at the same temperature and barometric pressure.

Water vapor pressure (Pv):

Water vapor pressure (Pv) is that part of the atmospheric pressure exerted due to the amount of water vapor present in the air. It is expressed in terms of absolute pressure as inches of mercury (in. Hg) or pounds per square inch (psi).

Wet-bulb temperature (WBT):

Wet-bulb temperature (WBT) is an indicator of the total heat content (or enthalpy) of the air, that is, of its combined sensible and latent heats. It is the temperature measured by a thermometer having a wetted sleeve over the bulb from which water can evaporate freely.

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Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to Murray Milne, Baruch Givoni, and late Kenneth Labs, as well as those whose work is cited in the text and illustrations, all of whom contributed immeasurably to the development of the author’s work described in this entry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. FAIA, 54 Larkspur Drive, Trumbull, CT, 06611, USA

    Donald Watson

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  1. Donald Watson
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Correspondence to Donald Watson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Vivian Loftness

  2. Department of Geography Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Dagmar Haase

  3. Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Dagmar Haase

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Watson, D. (2013). Bioclimatic Design . In: Loftness, V., Haase, D. (eds) Sustainable Built Environments. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5828-9_225

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