Thermal Comfort, Solar Exposure, Energy Production, and Carbon Reduction of Court-Yarded Clustered Sustainable Housing in Arid Regions

This chapter challenges the traditional urban housing identity in Egypt by transferring complex urban microclimate details into urban planning/architecture design action to generate housing typologies in hot arid regions that use appropriate materials to maximize thermal resistivity. The presented housing typology is based on a decade of microclimate research in Egypt revealing court-yarded cluster housing typology. Assessment of Urban, Building, Material, and Renewables dimensions (UBMR) neighborhood passive scenarios in New Aswan included pedestrian thermal comfort, solar irradiance on ground levels, solar Radiant Exposure (SRE) of the cluster courtyard walls, energy consumption, and decarbonization. The usage of Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB) bearing walls for the building envelope completed the urbanism passiveness picture, revealed compliance with the Egyptian energy efficiency code, and significantly reduced annual cooling energy consumption by 10 kWh/m2 and carbon emissions by 4 kg/m2. Coupling the urban building geometrical masterplan sketching and vegetation adjustments offers reduced heat gain of 24.66% at peak time (2 PM) in comparison to parcel planning. ENVI-met analyzes microclimate using weather data auxiliary tools to extract assessment parameters for UBMR dimensions. It is argued that both urban Solar irradiance (IRD) and building SRE tripled with Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) are essential to conserving energy and decarbonizing the environment.