Sustainability through Bioclimatic Building Design in North–East India

Building construction and operation have an enormous direct and indirect impact on the environment. The issues of sustainable building design are multi-facets and highly lateral in nature. However building sustainability largely focus on the operation of the building and construction process. Bioclimatism is a critical parameter for achieving sustainability of modern architecture. This concept takes into account the solar passive techniques and micro-climatic conditions in building design; which improves the building artificial energy efficiency and thermal comfort conditions in the built environment. Vernacular architecture based on bioclimatism concepts were developed and used through the centuries by many civilizations across the world. A questionnaire based survey has carried out at seventy five functional vernacular architecture of north eastern region of India. Temperature, humidity and day lighting data both inside and outside of the buildings are collected at all these houses. We came across some interesting findings related to bioclimatism, socio-economic status, cultural setup and sustainability in this vernacular architecture. We found that social and cultural values are closely associated with building design style and function. So these parameters needs due importance towards comfort and sustainability analysis of buildings. We also found different solar passive features available in most of these houses related to temperature control and promotion of natural ventilation. These houses are constructed using locally available building materials. Since these materials have low embodied energy and are from the same climatic zone, they fit into the local environment perfectly and represent a unique example towards achieving sustainability.