Economic assessment of transparent elements in the integrated use of atrium and courtyard in different regions of turkey

During the last two decades, energy consumption and CO2 emissions has grown all over the world. Certainly, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases decreasing energy consumption and providing security of energy supply are main global targets against environmental problems. As a candidate member of the European Union, Turkey is an energy-importing country because of its limited energy sources. Furthermore, Turkey's energy demand has increased annually due to population increase and economic growth. As a result, Turkey is going to face specific problems on providing energy and declining pollutant on environment. All over the industrialized world, the building sector accounts for more than one third of the global energy consumption. It is expected that, awareness and demand for better quality of the indoor environment would lead to rising building energy consumption in the coming years. Considering type of buildings, offices and retail spaces are among the most energy-intensive typologies in the non-domestic building sector. The commercial buildings sector consumes a huge amount of energy and its energy consumption pattern will likely increase sharply in the near future. As a result, there has been a general movement towards finding effective design strategies to reduce the energy demands of buildings and encourage further awareness of energy-conscious design. The energy efficiency of built environment can play an important role in reducing the challenges of climate change, resource diminution, and wider environmental issues. Lately, due to crisis in energy consumption, energy efficiency is becoming more of a priority in recent years and there is a need to consider passive design options (e.g., building form, orientation, and envelope) more carefully and to enhance energy efficient indoor air quality by energy-efficient means. Over the past few decades there have been changes in the environmental and energy policy. New strategies, regulations and economic measures related to sustainability and energy conservation have been introduced. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is intensively employed for the evaluation of the environmental impacts in relation to the production, use, disposal and recycling of the products, containing the materials made from. life cycle energy analysis, operating energy has a major share of total energy usage during building lifespan. Since operating energy of the buildings has the largest share in the life cycle energy distribution, reducing its share appears to be an important criterion in the design of buildings. Design of low energy building can achieve by reducing its operating energy through active and passive technologies. In order to reduce operational energy demand of the buildings, usage of integrated passive and active technics come into play. For instance, using capability of atria and courtyards can be effective. Both building types have ability to provide daylight and additional heating or cooling to adjacent spaces and reduce transmission losses. The thermal performance of courtyard/atrium buildings depends greatly on the factors (such as geometry, location, latitude, height, external climate, microclimate, etc.) which involve working with the climate rather than against it, so that the need for artificial space conditioning is reduced. There have been various researches on the courtyard and atrium design. None of these researches, however, considered energy-efficient and integrated usage of atrium and courtyard. There is a gap in the literature with respect to research into improving the energy performance of the buildings through the integrated usage of atria and courtyards. The current research is significant as it fulfills these gaps in the literature. This research aims to investigate seasonal usage of courtyard and atrium for enhancing energy efficiency and energy cost effectiveness of the integrated usage of atrium and courtyard buildings in five cities of Turkey which namely are Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Erzurum and Diyarbakir as representatives of mild-humid, temperate, hot-humid, cold, and hot-dry climate respectively. This research aims to identify the effect of seasonal time on the integrated usage of courtyard and atrium to find a cost optimal energy usage in commercial office buildings. The research objectives have been listed as follows: • Optimization of the passive energy performance of courtyard and atrium spaces in buildings. • Studying the effect of using pivot windows on energy consumption of atria and courtyards as well as of their integrated usage. • Investigation of energy performance of the courtyard and atrium buildings to find an optimum integrated solution. • Establishment of an integrated atrium-courtyard building to enhance sustainability of the buildings and to minimize their energy consumption in the operation phase of the buildings carrying out lifecycle cost analysis. This research answers to the following main research questions: • How can we optimize the passive performance of courtyard and atrium space in the buildings? • How can we integrate atrium and courtyard usage to increase energy efficiency of the buildings? • How can we integrate atrium and courtyard usage to minimize the operational cost? Thermal behavior of two buildings, modeled within the scope of this research, were analyzed. One of the models had a central atrium enclosed with skylight and the other had a central courtyard. This research examined thermal performance of both atrium and courtyard spaces as well as their integrated usage. DesignBuilder as an interface and Energy Plus (based on ASHRAE) as an analytical software were used to find thermal behavior of atrium and courtyard with regard to climatic variables in Turkey. This research is original and contributes to the literature, as it investigates the integrated usage of atrium and courtyard with respect to the energy efficiency. The findings revealed that the integrated usage of a courtyard and atrium can save energy in all five climates if a courtyard mode/strategy is adopted during the summer and an atrium architectural mode is used in the cold months. The results of this research also showed that using the passive characteristics of courtyards, atria, and, most importantly, their integrated usage influences energy consumption. Transforming atrium into the courtyard by investing on pivot windows on the skylight of atrium area has acceptable payback time in Antalya, Diyarbakir and Istanbul, however in Erzurum and Ankara has senseless compensation. Regarding to investigated certain characteristic of atrium and courtyard on adjacent building, natural ventilation was turned off during simulation process. Since a number of alternatives appear to impact on building energy consumption, further studies are recommended to be carried out on the energy performance impacts of the integration of other passive energy strategies (e.g., the stack effect) on buildings.