The Improvement of Housing Façade by Bioclimatic Design Means towards Sustainability: The Case of Duhok City, Iraq

With the constant grow of world energy demand, and with nearly 80% of that energy coming from non-renewable energy such as fossil fuels, the non-renewable energy sources have seriously affected on the environment and caused issues like climate change, CO2 emission, air pollution, etc. The residential building sector takes up around 23% of the world total energy consumption, and with building envelope being a vital element that effects on the total building energy consumption. Hence, this study pays attention to designing more environmental friendly houses and improving the existing ones, by taking the houses in Duhok city/ Iraq as case studies. The façades of the case study houses are improved by bioclimatic means, since the majority of the houses in the city has no considerations towards climate-adaptive design and are very much depending on non-renewable sources of energy. By analyzing the case studies and their local climate, it became evident where the façades lacked consideration to the local climate. Therefore, the weaknesses in the case study houses’ façades got improved by adopting the knowledge derived from the studies reviewed in literature on bioclimatic design, its principles and how to design the elements of façade according to climate and orientation. Lastly, recommendations based on bioclimatic principles are presented for different orientations (north, south, east and west) of housing façades to provide an energy efficient and sustainable house.