Introduction to Architectural Science

Abstract

My hope isthat after absorbing the contentsof thismodest work, the reader will be able to answer this question. After all, the main aim of any education isto develop a critical faculty. Building environments affect us through our sensory organs: 1. The eye, i.e. vision, a condition of which is light and lighting; the aim is to ensure visual comfort but also to facilitate visual performance. 2. The ear, i.e. hearing: appropriate conditionsfor listening to wanted sound must be ensured, but also the elimination (or control) of unwanted sound: noise. 3. Thermal sensors, located over the whole body surface, in the skin; this is not just a sensory channel, as the body itself producesheat and hasa number of adjustment mechanismsbut it can function only within a fairly narrow range of temperatures and only an even narrower range would be perceived ascomfortable. Thermal conditionsappropriate for human well-being must be ensured. What isimportant for the designer isto be able to control the indoor environmental conditions: heat, light and sound. Rayner Banham (1969) in his Architecture of the well-tempered environment postulated that comfortable conditions can be provided by a building (passive control) or by the use of energy (active control), and that if we had an unlimited supply of energy, we could ensure comfort even without a building. In most real cases it is a mixture (or synergy) of the two kindsof control we would be relying on. In thisday and age, when it isrealised that our traditional energy sources (coal, oil, gas) are finite and their rapidly increasing use hasseriousenvironmental consequences(CO2 emissions, global warming, aswell aslocal atmospheric pollution), it should be the designer’s aim to ensure the required indoor conditions with little or no use of energy, other than from ambient or renewable sources. Therefore the designer’s task is to: 1. examine the given conditions (site conditions, climate, daylight, noise climate); 2. establish the limits of desirable or acceptable conditions (temperatures, lighting and acceptable noise levels); 3. attempt to control these variables (heat, light and sound) by passive means (by the building itself) as far as practicable; 4. provide for energy-based services (heating, cooling, electric lighting, amplification or masking sound) only for the residual