Guidelines for High-Rise Building Facades in Terms of Energy Efficiency

In today’s world, energy is one of the most important factors in each individual’s life, people cannot imagine their life without energy. Due to increasing human needs in different types of energy in everyday life, energy efficiency has become a significant issue, especially after the energy crises in 1970s. Thus, one of the main challenges in recent years is finding ways to use passive solar design strategies in order to respond to human needs. When it comes to architecture, again finding ways in order to benefit from passive systems become an important. This is especially valid for high rise buildings which consume huge amount of energy due to their scale and function. If their large facade areas are considered, they may provide great opportunities to make use of passive solar design strategies. Accordingly, Because of global warming that the Earth is facing today, if designed with passive solar design strategies, buildings could play a vital role in the reduction of energy costs during their life cycle. Although, there is considerable research on how to design sustainable facades, nonetheless, there is a gap in the literature relating to facade design in different climatic zones to minimize energy use. In order to achieve this task, high rise buildings in four major climatic zones are analyzed in terms of passive solar design strategies and materials utilized in the building. Meanwhile, the author’s main attempt is to make viewpoint of architects more clear about the influence of benefiting from passive design systems for façade of the high rise buildings. Thereby, this study is based on a theoretical research where relevant literature and selected case studies of Norman Foster have been reviewed to arrive at conclusion. On the other hand, it is mainly qualitative method of data collection. Finally, High rise buildings in vertically growing cities of Dubai, Frankfurt, Kuala Lumpur and Moscow for example need to be designed in accordance with passive solar design strategies so that maximum reduction in the energy costs can be achieved from manufacturing to operation stage of high rise buildings. Furthermore, the results of this study prove that high rise buildings can be energy efficient if appropriate passive solar design strategies are used in their design to make maximum use of natural light, ventilation, passive solar heating and cooling. Keywords: High Rise Building- Energy Efficiency- Design Strategies- Solar Heat Gain- Natural Lighting- Natural Ventilation