Bioclimatic building designs for different climates in China

This paper presents the work on developing simple bioclimatic building design charts for five major climatic zones in mainland China. These zones include severe cold, cold, hot summer & cold winter, mild, and hot summer & warm winter. Five cities, namely Changchun, Beijing Shanghai, Kunming and Guangzhou were selected to represent the five major climates. Six basic design strategies such as conventional heating, passive solar heating, natural ventilation, thermal mass with/without overnight ventilation, evaporative cooling and air-conditioning were considered. Their respective regions were shown on the psychrometric chart. Twelve monthly climatic lines were determined and assessed in relation to the comfort zone and the six design strategy regions. The comfort zone was based on the acceptable range of operative temperatures and humidity for spaces specified in the latest ASHRAE standard 55-2004. Using the bioclimatic charts, discomfort indices were determined and the appropriate climatic control design strategies investigated. It is hope that these basic climate analyses could give architects and engineers a feel for the appropriate design strategies during the initial conceptual design stage when different building schemes are being considered.