Near-Zero Energy District

Urban Design for Disney Shanghai 10km^2 Near-Zero Energy District

"10km^2"is an experimental pilot project of a long term multi-disciplinary research that aims to creating sustainable, low carbon, near zero energy cities. The project is part of a research process but also different in two aspects. First, we aim to know only enough to create a design that works. Second, we aim to identify those areas where we do not yet know enough to incorporate them into a practical design. The focus of this studio is to develop six "toy problems" of different urban system and then incorporate the research into the design. I'm working on the building typology system, and how can the typology influences the building energy consumption and how to reduce the consumption.

TEAM

Zhiwen Qiu, and Members of Georgia Tech School of Architecture

ADVISOR

Professor Perry Yang, Georgia Tech

YEAR

2016

MY ROLE

Building Typology & Energy

Architectural Design

Environmental Studies

Approach

Understand what to design and how to evaluate the design;
Define scope: identify core systems as research focus;
Develop "design modules" of different systems -- urban form, energy, water, ecosystem and transportation: i) Make explicit design in/output, specify variables/ parameters, design methodologies and design rules and constraints of each system design ii) Develop performance objectives, measurements, metrics used to evaluate technologies. iii) Design database of technologies, design components, cost models, maps of input - output systems;
Develop methodology, principles and procedure of integrated design (roadmap that indicates interfaces among all different systems.

Building Typology Design

Workflow of building typology energy research

Develop systems of building typology

Assumption and Constraints

For building density, we assume that the block size varies from 100x100, 150x150, 200x200 and 300x300, by analyzing other cities , for instance, Manhattan, Tokyo and Shanghai itself.
The typical idealized building typology – slab, courtyard, row house and tower -- are taken from literature as well as from Shanghai traditional site. As far as the block organization, the assumptions are based on three configurations from previous study – peripheral, centralized and decentralized.
Another assumption is that future residential blocks would focus on low to mid-rise apartments with internal green spaces that forms a community.
For Energy performance, UMI uses Boston weather, Boston office building, concrete materials and 40% window to wall ratio.

We assume that the future living block in Shanghai new town features mix of row house and low to mid-rise apartments which creates community within the block at ground level. The building typology at this block size change from slab building at FAR 1 and 2 while is limited to tower type when the FAR is above 3.

Conclusions

Operational energy divided by total floor area comparison:

Courtyard > Slab > Row House > Tower

Operational energy divided by total footprint area comparison:

Tower > Slab > Row House > Courtyard

Modeling Process

In order to categorize the complex geometries and forms of the building typologies, we take the “number of faces” and ”cavity” the geometry has as a way to define the typologies. The range of FAR change is 1, 4, 6, 8 and all the forms are generated from the idealized typologies to further test the energy consumption. The cavity defines as how many “holes” a building has and in this case, we only tested the scenario where is either one hole or none.

Upon when the cavity is one, the building becomes courtyard shape where the number of faces range from 9-27 which is the pyramid courtyard type.

Energy Consumption

The results in UMI give us information that with same FAR, the total operational energy is decreasing while increase the total number of faces. On the other hand, the operational energy per square meter by dividing the total footprint area tells us that the more the number of faces, generally the less energy cost. As far as the relationship with the SVR, generally with same density, the lower the better.

Rotation Typology

Sketch Urban Grid

A series of sketches were made to explore the possibilities of different subdivision strategies on the site based on the early "toy problems". Traffic and circulation was taken into great consideration in order to connect the site to the city. A lot of green and open spaces were designed to allow residents connect with nature.