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Frisia-woningen Amersfoort: A.H. van Wamelen
Get PDFIn 1918 a retired teacher and an ex-professional soldier founded a ‘middle-class housing association’, which they named Frisia. Their aim was to introduce a new form of living, whereby likeminded people were housed in compact, yet comfortable and relatively low-cost dwellings. The target group was ‘educated and cultured, including retirees, who wished to continue to live as cultured and educated people even after the considerable shrinkage of their income’. The association commissioned architect A.H. van Wamelen (1885-1962) to produce a design for 41 dwellings on a site at the foot of the Amersfoortse Berg, which had been under development as a high-quality residential area for some time. Central to the plans were a number of collective amenities, such as a central laundry area, and a manager and a housekeeper for heavy work. The design sketches were published in Wendingen in 1920 and captioned ‘communication homes’, an allusion to the project’s ambitions.
Van Wamelen designed a complex of six rows of dwellings: four long rows on either side of Schaepmanlaan and Piersonlaan, plus two smaller blocks with other dwelling types on Borgesiuslaan, opposite the northernmost homes at the ends of the four rows. The basic type of dwelling in the four long rows is relatively wide and shallow. Two connecting rooms, a third reception room, a T-shaped hall with a central staircase and a kitchen have been ingeniously combined to create the most compact layout possible. The stairs lead to four bedrooms below a spacious attic. The corner dwelling types provide considerably more space, with an extended kitchen and a bay window on the third reception room. A weighty chimney element in the centre of the house supports the high roof.
In 1918 richtten een gepensioneerde leraar en een oud-beroepsmilitair een ‘middenstands-woningbouwvereniging’ in Amersfoort op. De vereniging, Frisia genaamd, wilde een nieuwe vorm van wonen introduceren: compact, tegen relatief lage kosten comfortabel wonen onder gelijkgestemden. Doelgroep waren ‘ontwikkelden en beschaafden, onder wie bijvoorbeeld gepensioneerden, die ook na de sterke inkrimping hunner inkomsten zoveel mogelijk op voet van beschaafde en ontwikkelde lieden wilden blijven leven’. De vereniging gaf opdracht aan architect A.H. van Wamelen (1885-1962) een ontwerp te maken voor 41 woningen op een terrein aan de voet van de Amersfoortse Berg, dat al geruime tijd in ontwikkeling was als villawijk. De plannen gingen uit van een aantal collectieve voorzieningen, zoals een centrale wasruimte, beheerder, en een huishoudster voor het zware werk. De ontwerpschetsen werden in 1920 in Wendingen gepubliceerd, met als bijschrift ‘communicatiewoningen’, een verwijzing naar de ambities van het project.
Van Wamelen ontwierp een complex van zes rijen woningen: vier lange rijen aan weerskanten van de Schaepman- en Piersonlaan, en tegenover de vier noordelijke kopwoningen aan de Borgesiuslaan nog twee kleinere blokken met afwijkende typen.
Het basistype in de vier lange rijen is een relatief brede, ondiepe woning. Twee kamers-en-suite, een derde woonvertrek, een T-vormige hal met trap in het midden en een keuken zijn op ingenieuze wijze samengevoegd tot een zo compact mogelijke ‘villa’-plattegrond. De trap leidt naar vier slaapkamers en de ruime zolder daarboven. De hoektypen zijn aanmerkelijk ruimer, met een uitgebouwde keuken en een erker voor het derde woonvertrek. Een zwaar schoorsteenkanaal in het midden van het huis ondersteunt de hoog opgetrokken kap
Conclusions
Get PDFThis research has explored the relationship between user satisfaction and design factors for office renovations considering energy efficiency. The findings of this research strongly support user-focused renovations of office buildings. My motivation for this research started from the consideration of comfort and satisfaction of building users and the focus on providing better and comfortable work environments for office users. The focus on user comfort and satisfaction is important, because literature shows that the increase of user satisfaction leads to the improvement of productivity and less absenteeism in workspaces.
This research has been conducted by applying diverse research methods and analyses, such as monitoring the indoor climate of office buildings, interviewing architects and facility managers, conducting user surveys, and conducting statistical analyses. This chapter presents the conclusions by answering the main research question and corresponding sub-questions of each chapter. This chapter also includes the general conclusions highlighting the scientific contributions to the body of knowledge of the built environment and limitations of the research
Energy in Dwellings: A comparison between Theory and Practice
Get PDFEnergy simulation models for buildings are widely used by policymakers, researchers and consultants as a tool to advice on the reduction of residential energy consumption. Previous studies have shown that there is a gap between theoretical building energy simulation results and actual energy use. The discrepancy between theory and practice is problematic, as for instance expected energy savings are often not achieved. This thesis shows that analysing specific household types and building characteristics can contribute to a better understanding of amongst others the influence of the occupant on actual energy consumption. The effectiveness of thermal renovations is dependent on both occupants and building characteristics, which means tailored advice on renovation measures is necessary. We also found that occupants and building characteristics are equally responsible for variances in actual residential energy consumption. To reduce the gap between theory and practice on a single building level, simulation models are improved using calibration methods. In the final part of this thesis, a method is developed to calibrate simulations on a building stock level, making building energy simulation tools more reliable for policymakers
Countercurrent Heat Exchange Building Envelope Using Ceramic Components
Get PDFResearch and development in building envelope design have promoted the convergence of two system types, Thermo-Active Building Systems and Adaptive Building Envelopes, that re- conceptualize the envelope as a distributed energy transfer function that captures, transforms, stores, and even re-distributes energy resources.
The widespread deployment of Thermo-Active Building Systems as a building envelope will depend on several factors. These factors include the value of the design attributes that impact energy transfer in relation to the performance of the building envelope assembly and the return on investment that these attributes individually or in the aggregate can provide as a reduction in Energy Use Intensity. The research focus is on the design development, testing, and energy reduction potential of a Thermo-Active Building System as an adaptive countercurrent energy exchange envelope system using ceramic components: the Thermal Adaptive Ceramic Envelope
African New Towns: An adaptive, principle-based planning approach
Get PDFThe New Towns (mixed use urban developments planned and built from scratch) initiated across the African continent since 1990 are overwhelmingly designed and built according to urban planning models from the previous century (Watson 2013; Marcinkowski 2018; Keeton and Provoost 2019). This has produced a generation of New Towns with rigid physical infrastructure and strict building regulations, that do not support the spatial manifestations of the ‘informal’ sector. As a result, these New Towns may become insular enclaves and informal settlements may develop adjacently to them. Residents of these adjacent areas may not have access to the services and amenities offered within the New Towns (Keeton and Provoost 2019). Coupled with the implicit vulnerabilities of emerging and threshold economies, the contextual mismatch of the imported urban models exacerbates spatial segregation at an urban scale. Additionally, contemporary New Town models often do not take current climate variability or future climate change threats into account. As implemented in the African context, they rarely respond effectively to surrounding natural landscapes or environmental sensitivities (Keeton and Nijhuis 2019).
Building on the arguments that (1) equal access to resources is a key component of sustainable development and that (2) urban planning benefits from new linkages between critical social theory and environmental science, this research proposes that applying adaptive urban planning principles to New Towns in the African context can increase ecological sustainability and social inclusivity (WCED 1987; Fainstein and Campbell 2012). The objective of this research is therefore to address the spatial challenges of African New Towns by developing an alternative planning and design approach that acknowledges both social and environmental dimensions, as well as the constant state of change that all cities exhibit. This is done by addressing four main research questions: (1) What are the spatial problems of African New Towns caused by the application of common planning approaches? (2) What are the principles of a more adaptive and sustainable planning and design approach and how can they address these problems? (3) How and to what extent can the adaptive planning and design principles be improved and applied? And finally, (4) As a result of the findings, how can adaptive planning approaches and the related principles be implemented?
The research first identifies the spatial challenges specific to contemporary African New Towns through a combination of empirical data collection and literature review. The research moves forward to bring these shared spatial challenges together with a set of guidelines for New Towns originally written by Michelle Provoost as an addition to UN-Habitat’s New Urban Agenda (Provoost 2016). The analysis of shared spatial challenges is used to revise, expand and refine these guidelines into a set of adaptive planning and design principles specific to African New Towns. The resulting principles are then tested by applying them through case study analysis of three existing New Towns to establish their universality as well as their ability to acknowledge local specificities.
In the final phase of the research, two short-term workshops validate the results by testing implementation of the principles in two African New Towns (Tatu City, Kenya and Mahonda, Zanzibar). The research concludes that the adaptive planning and design principles can be an effective starting point for stakeholders involved in the development of New Towns across Africa. It furthermore concludes that these principles must be adapted locally to meet the individual urgencies of different sites.
This research contributes to the existing body of literature on contemporary African New Towns (Watson 2014; Murray 2017; Van Noorloos and Kloosterboer 2018; Keeton and Provoost 2019). Notably, most authors working on this topic primarily employ internet sources or a single case study to build their arguments, which can be problematic in the African context where remotely-sourced data is often unreliable and New Towns as a group exhibit vast divergences that may limit the transferability of results from individual case studies. This research therefore fills a knowledge gap by bringing together empirical evidence acquired during fieldwork in Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, and Tanzania, combined with literature review and the results of interdisciplinary workshops to support its claims. It also contributes to the current debate on normative assumptions regarding planning in the Global South (Watson 2002; Watson 2016; Cirolia and Berrisford 2017), and directly addresses the disconnect between academia and practice regarding contemporary African New Towns (Grubbaur 2019; Keeton and Provoost 2019). Finally, this study aims to provide an alternative approach for planners, developers and decision-makers initiating tomorrow’s New Towns in Africa
Actual energy saving effects of thermal renovations in dwellings: Longitudinal data analysis including building and occupant characteristics
Get PDFEnergy renovations often result in lower energy savings than expected. Therefore, in this study we investigate nearly 90,000 renovated dwellings in the Netherlands with pre and post renovation data of actual and calculated energy consumption. One of the main additions of this paper, compared to previous studies on thermal renovation, is that it only takes dwellings into account with the same occupants before and after renovation, using a large longitudinal dataset. Overall this paper shows new insights towards the influence of the energy efficiency state of a building prior to energy renovation, the type of building, the number of occupants, the income level of the occupants and the occupancy time on the actual energy savings, the energy saving gap and on the probability of lower energy savings than expected. We also investigate if the influence is different per type of thermal renovation measure. Some of the findings are: It is impossible to conclude which single thermal renovation measure is the most effective because this is dependent on the energy efficiency of the building prior to the energy renovation, type of building, income level and occupancy; Occupants with a high income save more energy than occupants with low income; dwellings with employed occupants benefit more from improved building installations than dwellings occupied by unemployed occupants; The prebound and rebound effects are only part of the explanations for lower than expected energy savings; Deep renovations result more often in lower than expected energy savings than single renovation measures but nevertheless they result in the highest average energy saving compared to other thermal renovation measures. The results could be used for more realistic expectations of the energy reduction achieved by thermal renovations, which is important for (amongst others) policymakers, clients and contractors who make use of energy performance contracting, home owners, landlords and (social) housing associations and as a starting point to improve the energy calculation method
Calibration of Energy Simulation Models on a Building Stock Level using Actual Energy Consumption Data: Making Building Energy Simulations a more Reliable Tool for Policymakers
Get PDFBuilding energy simulation models are an important tool, not only in building design but also for policy making. Previous research has shown that there is a significant gap between actual energy consumption, and the energy consumption calculated by building energy simulation models. Many researchers, practitioners, and policymakers mainly impute this energy performance gap to occupant behaviour. One would expect this gap to be less at building stock level because occupant behaviour would be averaged. However, the performance gap is known to be high at a building stock level too, indicating a more structural problem in building energy simulation models. Being able to assess and predict correctly energy use in the building stock is essential to realize national and international energy saving targets. As actual energy consumption data at individual house level are becoming more often available or are registered by national bodies, this research introduces a method that uses actual energy consumption data and automatic calibration techniques to improve assumptions in building energy simulation models used to assess the whole building stock. Two types of models were tested; the first one being the steady state model used in NL in the framework of the EPBD, the other one being a dynamic model in EnergyPlus. The method was able to reduce the root mean square error of the energy performance gap by nearly 24% for the steady state simulation method, and by 27% for the dynamic simulation method, and, most important, the average energy performance gap in the sample (133 dwellings) as well as in the control group (180), disappeared almost completely. This method has the potential to make building simulation models a more reliable tool for policymakers
Serious games as research instruments – Do’s and don’ts from a cross-case-analysis in transportation
Get PDFSerious games as research instruments are seen as a special type of participatory modelling, allowing a researcher to observe the behaviour and decisions taken by players. Yet, games have their own dynamics and come with certain challenges when used as a research instrument. This article reports on specific challenges in using games as research instruments in the domain of transportation. Therefore, three digital games from the transportation sub-systems freight transport, airport management and public transport are presented. The cases are analysed according to the challenges faced during the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, usage as research instrument, and evaluation. Based on this cross-case analysis of the research games, Do’s and Don’ts as well as practical recommendations are derived to support researchers and practitioners in applying serious games as research instruments in transportation. The new ReDIRE-framework to analyse serious games for research purposes is presented for this aim. Design guidelines resulting from our contribution can be helpful for game designers and researchers alike
Optimal synthesis of tours from multi-period origin-destination matrices using elements from graph theory and integer programming
Get PDFNowadays, mobility modelling at individual level is receiving significant attention. Moreover, the technological advances in the field of travel behaviour analysis have supported and promoted the modelling paradigm shift to disaggregate methods such as agent/activity-based modelling Nonetheless, such approaches usually require significant amounts of detailed and fine-grained data which are not always easily accessible. The methodology presented in this paper aims to generate individual home-based trip-chains (i.e. tours) utilising aggregated sources of information, primarily, typical Origin-Destination matrices (ODs) and secondarily travel surveys. A suitable framework able to optimally identify ‘hidden’ tours in typical ODs is proposed and evaluated through its application on a set of multi-period OD matrices, covering an urban area of realistic size. This novel methodological framework synthesises the individual tours by combining and elevating advanced graph theory and integer programming concepts. The performance of the proposed methodology proves particularly encouraging since high estimation accuracy (greater than 85%) was achieved even for the most challenging examined test-case. The presented results provide positive evidence that information regarding travel behaviour on an individual level can be produced based on aggregated data sources such as OD matrices. This element is particularly valuable towards the analysis of mobility at the person-level, especially within the framework of agent-based modelling
The World and the Cave: Imagination, Public Space and Politics with Hannah Arendt and José Saramago
No full textImagination, Hannah Arendt argues, is the human capacity to mentally remove oneself and see things from a different perspectives. It allows to imagine how things can be different. As such, this capacity is as much the source of political action as well as of architectural design. Architectural imagination - as well as understanding - might flourish when fed by perspectives from other professional fields, like philosophy, social sciences, theology, as well as other artistic fields, like literature, painting, and sculpture. In this paper, Hans Teerds proposes an exemplary reading beyond the borders of the architectural profession by means of a comparative reading of Hannah Arendt’s 1958 The Human Condition and the novel The Cave (2000) by the Portuguese writer Jose Saramago. By reading them together, this paper explore perspectives upon public space, mass consumption and production, and craftsmanship, which, highlight political aspects of architecture
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