Architectural design can significantly improve home energy-efficiency. New energy-saving techniques are regularly proposed; however, integrating all design parameters into the energy simulation specific knowledge and is time-consuming, making it difficult for non-experts in building energy analysis. This present study investigates the impact of envelope designs on household cooling energy consumption in housing complexes located in Bangkok neighborhood areas. The study selects a representative house and identifies a range of envelope designs, including thermal properties of exterior walls and roof, painted color, length of roof eaves, and window-to-wall ratio (WWR). The Latin hypercube method randomly generates two hundred sets of design scenarios based on those design parameters. The eQuest model is used to perform analysis of household cooling energy consumption for four orientations, and the simulation results are validated. The standardized regression coefficient (SRC) is used to determine a strong correlation between design parameters and cooling energy consumption in detached houses. The results reveal that improving a window’s solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC), wall painted color, wall u-value, and length of roof eaves could reduce energy consumption by up to 19.7 percent. The WWR and building orientation were found to have only a small impact on household cooling energy consumption, especially for a square-shaped house. The results provide designers and non-professional a simple design guideline to improve the energy efficiency of their home designs.

In recent times, retail buildings in tropical areas have started to evolve from fully enclosed air-conditioned designs towards designs featuring open-air naturally ventilated malls. This paper discusses influential factors that can be used to help achieve thermal comfort conditions in the semi-outdoor spaces of open-air malls within the Bangkok Metropolitan Area in Thailand. The researchers surveyed 23 buildings and categorised them into three groups according to their configurations. Six representative projects were selected and assessed using a computational fluid dynamics program. The results revealed that the percentages of thermal comfort hours varied from 34.7% to 80.8% of the annual occupation time and were highly dependent on the design decisions taken for individual projects. The study found that among five important design factors, which are position of openings in accordance to the prevailing wind, distribution of openings, window-to-wall ratio, building shape, and openings that encourage cross-ventilation, the first factor was the most influential. Buildings that have their position of openings in good accordance to the prevailing winds can achieve the number of hours 2.0 times greater than those that do not.

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A simulation model has been widely used to investigate and predict the energy performance of buildings. However, to achieve more accurate energy result, the input data in the simulation model should be obtained from field measurements. Collecting field measurements is a very time intensive activity. With this limitation, in this work we summarized results of parameters most influential on energy results from 44 papers performing energy simulation model for determining the potential of energy saving and improving the model accuracy in various building types including offices, single rooms, homes, multi-family buildings, and other commercial buildings. It is found that the parameters with influence on energy performance were dissimilar to the parameter that the modelers used for adjusting the model accuracy and determining energy saving. Set point temperature had a large impact on energy results for office and home, while shading and occupancy schedule significantly impacted the energy results for multi-family building and other commercial buildings, respectively. At present, the number of sensitivity analysis related to building energy performance is limited. Future studies should increase a number of sensitivity analysis of building energy performance for different building types.

Suburban areas with low-density buildings are subject to only limited shading from adjacent buildings. As a result, these areas have more surface area absorbing more radiation, which has the effect of increasing urban temperatures compared with built-up high-density areas. This study aims to assess the combinations of landscape design, namely the integration of wall-paint colors, used to influence the outdoor thermal conditions around a single house in a housing cluster in suburban Bangkok, Thailand. The investigation used the ENVI-met model to perform diurnal profiles of the air temperature (Ta), relative humidity (RH), direct and diffuse solar radiation, and wind speed (WS) in summer. The results show that only a single design element adversely affected the cooling effect, while other combinations of landscape design significantly improved outdoor thermal conditions. It was found that a combination of light wall-paint colors and trees planted near the house provided the maximum reduction in Ta of 0.7°C (1.6% from the base case), and a 2.7% reduction in the noon solar radiation. High-reflectance wall-paint was found to have a secondary influence of up to 0.2°C on the Ta, while the temperature reductions from changing the ground-cover materials had only a slight impact. Finally, landscape designs integrating wall-paint colors to promote a cooler outdoor environment are proposed.