Over the last decade, as a result of rapid urban
growth and increasing human population, Guwahati city is
witnessing multilayered transformation owing to socio-economic,
geo-political and technological issues. This constant increase of
built form is resulting haphazard urban growth pattern in down
town city areas sacrificing the access to daylight and solar
radiation inside residential buildings. Even though the
development pattern of Guwahati is controlled by established
GMDA building bye-laws; these building regulations and
guidelines are unable to control the organic growth of the city
since there is no climate-sensitive approach available in the
existing GMDA bye-laws. This paper aims to discuss the
likelihood of constructing a composite climatic envelope by using
daylight spacing angle and solar elevation angle techniques
within the residential zone of Guwahati city. This paper also
analyses how climatic envelope technique helps to establish an
efficient height-to-width (H/W) ratio in spatial arrangement of
residential neighbourhood and ensures a higher levels of daylight
factor (DF), permits solar access to the neighboring buildings and
also enables better ventilation rate inside every rooms of
residential buildings. This paper analyses further to discuss about
the performance of natural ventilation inside building envelope
and reviews the common energy code of openable window to floor
area (WFRop) ratio in urban residential buildings. During this
study, an existing urban spatial arrangement of residential
neighbourhood under GMDA jurisdiction is studied, discussed
and analysed. Results of this study, plotting H/W ratio against
average daylight factor and ventilation rate can be used as a
preliminary urban design tool to configure the urban fabric
especially within the residential zone of GMDA area.