The Microclimate Design Process in Current African Development: The UEM Campus in Maputo, Mozambique

Abstract

Even if current action towards sustainability in architecture mainly concerns single buildings, the responsibility of the urban shape on local microclimate has largely been ascertained. In fact, it heavily affects the energy performances of the buildings and their environmental behaviour. This produces the necessity to broaden the field of intervention toward the urban scale, involving in the process different disciplines, from architecture to fluid dynamics and physics. Following these ideas, the Masterplan for the Campus of the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo (Mozambique) develops a methodology that integrates microclimatic data and analyses from the initial design model. The already validated software ENVI-met (Version 4.4, ENVI_MET GmbH, Essen, Germany) acts as a useful ‘feedback’ tool that is able to assess the microclimatic behaviour of the design concept, also in terms of outdoor comfort. In particular, the analysis focused on the microclimatic performances of a ‘C’ block typology east oriented in relation to the existing buildings, in Maputo’s specific climatic characteristics. The initial urban proposal was gradually evaluated and modified in relation to the main critical aspects highlighted by the microclimatic analyses, in a sort of circular process that ended with a proposed solution ensuring better outdoor comfort than the existing buildings, and which provided an acceptable balance between spatial and climatic instances.