Climate-responsive Building Design in North-East India

Energy, environment and architecture are closely related, the more is the energy consumption the worse is the environmental degradation. With rapid economic growth and improvement in people’s living standard, the building sector will continue to be the key energy end user. Hence energy conservation becomes a necessity rather than an option in both commercial and residential buildings and hence it becomes desirable to design climate responsive buildings by incorporating appropriate solar passive features. Climate responsive building design is a concept that integrates the micro-climate and architecture with human thermal comfort conditions. This concept takes into account the solar passive techniques, micro-climatic conditions and thermal comfort conditions that improve the building artificial energy efficiency. This fact is well supported by various studies on vernacular architecture as well as on modern architecture throughout the world. Thermal comfort not only makes the occupants comfortable but also decides the energy consumption in the building and thus its sustainability. Throughout the world, from ancient times people have used solar passive techniques that have evolved through generations. These structures got attention for detailed study among the researchers at present times. Different researchers had done extensive study on thermal performance of vernacular buildings in the different parts of the world. However, vernacular architecture of North-Eastern India which perfectly represents the principle of climate-oriented architecture still lacks experimental validation and quantitative analysis.

A field study has been carried out to evaluate the thermal comfort perception of the occupants in naturally ventilated buildings at different bioclimatic zones of North-East India. The survey was performed in naturally ventilated buildings during the winter, pre-summer season in 2008. There were 220 occupants from 75 vernacular buildings who participated in this study and 200 questionnaire responses were collected. The data collected include temperature, humidity and lighting level, as well as results from questionnaires on the occupant’s sensations of thermal comfort. We came across some interesting findings related to bioclimatism, socio-economic status, cultural setup and sustainability in this vernacular architecture. 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. Henceforth, they fit into the local environment perfectly and represent a unique example towards achieving sustainability.