Speakers

University Professor Dr Ardeshir Mahdavi is an internationally recognized authority in Building Science. Prior to his current affiliation at the Institute of Building Physics, Services, and Construction at the Faculty of Civil Engineering Sciences, Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), Professor Mahdavi held positions at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien), and National University of Singapore (NUS). Professor Mahdavi conducts research in building physics, building simulation, building ecology, and human ecology. Professor Mahdavi has published over 700 scientific papers and has supervised over 65 doctoral students. Professor Mahdavi is the recipient of the prestigious IBPSA Distinguished Achievements Awards.

 Performance paradigm is a natural reflection of our interest in the quality and effectiveness of the artifacts we build, whether they are machines, buildings, or whole cities. To this end, performance domains are defined,   performance variables are established and included, together with their mandated values in standards and legal documents. We develop methods and tools to predict the performance implications of our interventions and  proclaim that performance-based standards liberate stakeholders from the straightjackets of prescriptive mandates. Instead of prescribing professionals how to design and maintain their artifacts in detail, we tell them what performance is expected from those artifacts. However,, looking at the consequences of our interventions across multiple scales we may need to consider if the performance paradigm has been implemented sufficiently and properly. We may even need to consider if the performance paradigm itself is indeed performant.

Jeeth Iype is an Architect and co-founder of GoodEarth. A person of ideas,, he is excited by innovation and translating ideas into architecture. He ispart of the team that conceptualizes the communities. Having gained experience creating vibrant communities that make one feel psychologically and socially secure, he  trying to address larger issues like climate change and desertification through regenerative agriculture, and sustainable water and waste management, to add value to its core business of building sustainable communities.

 Jeeth and his team at GoodEarth, are engaged in bringing together like-minded people with a common vision of building a sustainable future. They believe that such a community generates a strong sense of belonging while also enabling a collective sense of security and responsibility. They foresee a future where many such communities keep growing, each influencing its neighborhood and context. Their vision is to inspire change in the way people live through our efforts in development. The keynote will narrate Jeeth’s journey in making Good Earth a successful experiment.

Richard de Dear has been continuously active in the domain of thermal comfort for over forty years in Australian, European, Asian, and North American universities. With over 250 peer-reviewed research outputs on the topic de Dear is currently the most highly cited researcher in thermal comfort (Scopus), and his work forms the basis for ASHRAE’s Standard 55 Adaptive Thermal Comfort section (from 2004 till present). Among his current duties are editorships for Nature Scientific Reports, ASHRAE Science and Technology for the Built Environment, and Elsevier Energy and Buildings. He was co-chair of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme Annex 69 Strategy and Practice of Adaptive Thermal Comfort in Low Energy Buildings from 2016 through to its completion in 2022. He serves on the WHO-WMO Indoor Overheating Technical Advisory Group. His thermal comfort research papers have received numerous best paper awards, including Building and Environment (2022, 2018), Energy and Buildings (2018), and ASHRAE Transactions (1999, 1998). He received ASHRAE’s Crosby-Field Award (1998) for best research paper across all of its outlets in 1998. In 1993 ASHRAE awarded him the Ralph G Nevins Physiology and Human Environment Award. In 1999 he received the Environmental Design and Research Association’s (EDRA) “Places” Research Award, and in 2014 he was inducted into the International Society of Indoor Air Quality’s Academy of Fellows.

An overwhelming majority of our knowledge of thermal comfort is confined to relatively simple situations of steady-state and iso-thermal exposures. In this talk de Dear will review thermal comfort, pleasure, and irritation in more complex and non-steady exposures. The talk will begin with the conceptual framework of alliesthesia and its empirical bases, and end with identifying where alliesthesia is most directly relevant including outdoor and semi-outdoor settings, personal comfort systems, vehicle cabins, transition spaces including rapid transit carriages, and station environments.

Susan Ubbelohde is a founding principal of Loisos + Ubbelohde, an office of unconventional practice based in Alameda, California and a Professor Emerita in the  Department of Architecture at University of California, Berkeley. Her practice  specializes in high-performance integrated design and is recognized for expertise in  daylighting and lighting design, zero-energy/zero-carbon design, energy and thermal  comfort simulations, natural ventilation, building monitoring, solar reflections and  data visualization, as well as design and fabrication of light sculptures. L+U projects have won over 240 design, sustainability, and lighting awards, including AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Project awards, Platinum LEED Certifications and Zero-Net-Energy  projects. Throughout her career, she has served on design and sustainability juries,  lectured internationally and published on green design, simulation tools, daylighting,  and lighting. An Indo-American Fellowship in Ahmedabad in 1989 supported a study of climate response in Le Corbusier’s Sarabhai House and Millowners Building, as well as the classrooms and dormitories of Louis Kahn’s IIM. Susan is a graduate of Oberlin College, the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon.

As architects practicing at the cutting edge of low-energy and resilient design, our office of Loisos + Ubbelohde believes buildings should “sail”. This means operating with minimal mechanical systems, like sails when they are becalmed can be assisted with a small auxiliary engine. We work in a design process that begins with human comfort delivered primarily by the envelope. But we practice in interesting times. With 2023, the “anomalous weather” that we  assumed was sold in the future arrived. Our buildings designed 10 years ago can no longer be counted on to provide comfort and fresh air to the occupants. Germany is looking at Spain’s siesta that they previously ridiculed, while Hawaiians need their open houses to transform to  spaceships when the fires arrive. Integrated architecture, systems and controls must couple  with buildings that can sell open to the world when the breeze is up and the air is temperate.  We will need to both survive and remain human in our architecture.

Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt is head of the research group Thermophysiology & Metabolism at Maastricht University. The fundamental aspect of the research line is the effect of environmental temperatures on physiology and behavior. This ranges from indoor environments in western populations to extreme conditions in Siberia. The study results show significant beneficial effects of excursions outside the thermoneutral zone; i.e. being exposed to heat and cold positively affects metabolic and cardiovascular health and increases resilience to extremes. The applied part of the research puts emphasis on how daily indoor environmental conditions relate to thermal comfort, behavior, health, and prevention of metabolic syndrome. His group searches for an optimal mix of different lifestyles and environmental factors to create a healthy sustainable indoor environment.

Are we better adapted to heat than cold? The presentation will include examples and new results from traditionally living humans and how they cope with extreme environmental conditions. This will be linked to current physiological knowledge about heat and cold acclimation. Finally, there will be food for thought on what extremes of heat and cold we can cope with.

Wolfgang Kessling holds a doctorate in physics and is a partner at Transsolar Energietechnik, Germany. He is an expert in climate-friendly building design and adaptive comfort concepts. The focus of his work is the development of innovative comfort concepts for both, indoor and outdoor spaces. He lectures regularly at universities and international conferences on sustainable design, thermal comfort, and zero-energy projects. In Asia, he was involved in the design of the first Zero Energy Office in Malaysia, in the climate and energy concepts for the cooled conservatories at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. The environmental concept of the School of Design Buildings 4 and recently opened 1&3 at NUS, Singapore became a highly recognized example of a tropical high comfort net positive energy design. These projects have been instrumental in laying the grounds for designing with higher indoor temperatures compensated by elevated air speeds and changing the code of practice in Singapore. The so-called Hybrid Cooling concepts are also implemented in the new BRAC University Campus building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, or in the Atlassian high rise in Sydney, Australia.

Where conventional low-temperature air conditioning represents the well-established standard, leaving traditional paths and introducing a high comfort design with higher room air settings in combination with breeze poses a challenge to clients and design teams. There are very few buildings designed on purpose with this concept. Adaptive Comfort concepts deliver excellent comfort but with lower reliance on mechanical systems. With Hybrid Cooling concepts, the ventilation and cooling systems can be substantially downsized, reducing investment costs as well as substantially reducing energy demand for ventilation and space cooling. The presentation will include examples of projects with Hybrid Cooling in Asia and explore innovations in design for comfort in the tropics: indoors, mid-doors, and outdoors.

Professor Leena Thomas is a sustainable architecture academic and research expert with experience in Australia and India. Her research and teaching focus on transforming development and design practices in response to global concerns for climate change and sustainability. Leena’s presentation will focus on her research into workplace and living environments where she has pioneered the use of detailed post-occupancy evaluation to investigate the role of the built environment in delivering energy efficiency, comfort, productivity, health and well-being, and sustainability. Through her research findings, Leena argues for the consideration of the social dimension of user experience alongside technical performance and the value of linking public health with planetary health.

Building on detailed post-occupancy evaluation and living laboratory approaches, this presentation will highlight opportunities and barriers for strengthening climate resilience at the scale of buildings and precincts. It provides insights from the Fairwater Living Laboratory that focused on an 850-home development in western Sydney that is home to Australia’s largest-scale geothermal air-conditioning installation and achieved a 6-Star GreenStar Communities rating.   Covering a three-year period to include one of Sydney’s worst summers as well as the pandemic, the research draws on precinct-level data, community and household surveys, as well as the detailed monitoring of 40 homes.  Research findings have shown energy savings and electrical demand reduction attributable to the geothermal air-conditioning and the added impact of house size in driving consumption. Other findings in relation to the rebound effect from installed air-conditioning and installed rooftop PV in some homes and adaptive practices in others point to the importance of designing sustainable practices amongst users. Precinct-based findings include the cooling effect of light-colored roofs and trees and vegetation as well as the health and well-being benefits for residents in spite of extreme weather and pandemic conditions.  Through these findings, we argue for the consideration of the social dimension of user experience and community engagement alongside technical performance, the value of linking public health with planetary health, and the benefits of a precinct-based approach for the built environment.

Ashok Lall, graduated from the University of Cambridge U.K. in Architecture & Fine Arts and obtained the Architectural Association Diploma in 1970. His architectural firm (estd. 1981) is committed to an architectural practice based on the principles of environmental sustainability and social responsibility. Engaged in architectural education since 1990, he has developed curricula and teaching methods to address environmental issues. He has published many articles and presented papers on environmentally sustainable design and has been an active member of institutions and groups promoting awareness and building competence in the sustainable design of buildings.

 Given the rapid rates of urbanisation, the challenge for the developing economies of the warm climate zones dealing with Climate Change is two-fold: to provide resilient shelter with improved quality of life for growing urban populations, and to mitigate climate change while doing so. The key lies in urban morphology. We seek a framework for urban growth and regeneration that is affordable, achieves basic comfort and well-being for poor citizens, and does so with limited embodied and operational carbon emissions while optimizing the potential for integrating renewables with the urban fabric. Parallel lines of research are presented that converge toward a high-density low-rise morphology as the optimum. This is accompanied by a menu of passive design principles that need to be mandated by regulation with standards for sufficiency of thermal comfort accounting for heat waves and UHI. Case studies of housing, institutional, and commercial buildings are presented. The level of comfort sought is a cultural phenomenon. Greater the expectation - greater the need for complex integration of building and cooling systems. We see a possibility of convergence around an expectation of sufficiency met with low carbon means.

Dr. Drury B. Crawley, Ph.D., AIA, Fellow ASHRAE, BEMP, is a Bentley Fellow and Director of Building Performance with Bentley Systems Inc., focusing on building performance, decarbonization, zero-energy buildings, sustainability, and smart cities. With more than 45 years of experience in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainability, Dr. Crawley has worked in engineering software development, government research, and standards development organizations, as well as building design and energy consulting companies.

With the increasing interest in climate change driven by human activity, recent research has focused on the impact of climate change or urban heat island on building operation and performance across the world. But this work usually aggregates the energy and peak demand impacts across a broad sector. In a recent study, impacts on the operating performance of an office building were estimated based on climate change and heat island scenarios in 25 locations (20 climate regions). This presentation presents the variation and differences among the 20 regions when climate change is introduced. The focus is on changes in comfort conditions, building equipment operation as well as daily patterns of energy performance using prototypical buildings that represent typical, good, and low-energy practices around the world. Other issues such as fuel swapping as heating and cooling ratios change, impacts on environmental emissions, and how low-energy building design incorporating renewables can significantly mitigate any potential climate variation are also presented.

Dr. Adrian Chong is an IBPSA Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of the Built Environment at the National University of Singapore (NUS). At NUS, he leads the IDEAS Lab (https://ideaslab.io), a multidisciplinary group that leverages building performance simulation, real-time data, and machine learning to improve building energy efficiency and occupant comfort. Adrian also serves as a subject editor for the journal Building Simulation and holds the role of Early Career Board Member for the journal Building and Environment.

 According to the IEA, buildings account for 30% of global final energy consumption, with energy demand for space cooling tripling since 1990. This escalating demand and climate change necessitates we rethink how we currently cool our buildings. Mixed-mode ventilation emerges as a promising solution to significantly reduce energy consumption through the integrated use of natural ventilation and air-conditioning. However, the application of mixed-mode ventilation in tropical climates has been constrained by a prevailing preconception of its limited effectiveness. This skepticism stems from challenges posed by consistently hot and humid conditions, which are thought to limit the potential of operating in natural ventilation. In this talk, I will share ongoing work at my research group to achieve effective mixed-mode ventilation in the tropics. Our approach, focusing on systems integration and occupant-centric controls, aims to address the skepticism surrounding mixed-mode ventilation in such climates. Preliminary findings underscore the promise of a more sustainable way to cool our buildings in the tropics through mixed-mode ventilation.

Aun Abdullah leads sustainability/esg at Lodha and has been instrumental in shaping the sustainability strategy at the group. He comes from a building services and infrastructure design/design management background, with experience on large/very large landmark projects in India and the Middle East (UAE and Qatar). Abdullah has led the formation of Lodha Net Zero Urban Accelerator, which focuses on embodied carbon, passive designs, equipment efficiency, renewable integration, green mobility, and green finance - with the intention of making net zero carbon the new normal for the built environment. Abdullah isam interested in cleantech and ideas that have the potential to become cost-effective (for the developer as well as the end-user) given the scale and growth opportunities in our operations.

 This talk explores the pivotal role of the built environment in navigating India's impending growth while addressing climate risks. Emphasizing resilience and decarbonization, it delves into the critical business case for climate action within the built environment sector. By examining the challenges and opportunities in supply chain transformation, the presentation advocates for sustainable practices that not only mitigate environmental impact but also foster economic growth. The intricate relationship between India's development trajectory, climate resilience, and the imperative for transformative actions in the built environment will be addressed.