The Porch and its Interaction with Building Design in Arid Zones

Abstract

Improving the energy performance of buildings has thus become a major challenge, as the building sector is now one of the main sources of energy consumption and one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Faced with these alarming challenges, current building design in the north is based on minimizing heat loss. However, this logic is not necessarily the most relevant in southern countries, characterized by excessive heat and insufficient, variable rainfall. The best way to achieve this is through sustainable design, with its intrinsic, energy-saving qualities, exploited by effective modeling. This article focuses on ideas and innovations that are helping to overcome these challenges. The results of introducing a porch into building design represent best practice in arid zones and beyond in terms of how it is thermally insulated. This has resulted in a significant reduction in thermal load in the energy ratio of up to 53.55%. This latest research aims to provide construction professionals with concrete examples of the design process, its technical feasibility, optimization and digitization based on climatic data from the arid zone.