Ninad Parag Shroff

AR3596

The city of Ahmedabad, like cities across the world, is grappling with the effects of global warming and climate change. With the increasing intensity and frequency of heat waves, there is a dire need to find effective solutions to make the built environment more resilient to extreme climatic conditions. 
The rapid development of the city has caused urban heat islands to grow over the years, exacerbating the extremely hot temperatures in summer months, which often exceed 40°C during the day. Buildings act as major contributors to these heat islands, and hence can also be key to mitigating the heat island effect. Commercial high-rises tend to be fully air-conditioned. A major contributor to the heat island is the waste heat from these air-conditioning systems. 
This research investigates biomimicry-based design principles (and their corresponding strategies) to increase the thermal efficiency of buildings in high temperatures, in order to reduce the space cooling load. Buildings across the world that have used biomimicry-based design strategies for thermal regulation have been studied to determine the principles used, the relationship of these principles with space organisation and form, and their effect in maintaining thermal comfort. The applicability of these principles in the context of commercial buildings in Ahmedabad is then assessed with respect to climate and building type. 
The research concludes that using various nature-inspired systems of cooling and ventilation - including strategies based on form and spatial arrangement - are effective (to varying degrees) in decreasing a building’s contribution to the urban heat island. 
The research also reveals that although biomimicry may have been identified as having a great potential to design buildings from a systems level, there are few examples of buildings that have directly used biomimicry principles for thermoregulation. Buildings are not living organisms, and do not have a capacity to self-regulate. However, through advancements in technology, there is a potential to fully realise buildings as being an extension of our own bodies, and hence be truly adaptive to climatic challenges.