A methodology to determine appropriate facade aperture sizes considering comfort and performance criteria: A primary school classroom case

School environments have a profound effect on pupils. The building envelope, particularly the facade, has a significant role in determining thermal, visual, acoustic comfort, energy usage and life-cycle cost as it regulates the relationship between the exterior and the interior. Nonetheless, there is a lack of a multi-perspective approach in the literature, assessing the facade as the key feature for achieving the comfort and performance criteria. Therefore, this paper aims at proposing a methodology to determine appropriate facade aperture sizes through examining a primary school classroom case. For the comfort and performance analyses, a typical Turkish primary school classroom was modelled. The aperture size was assumed to vary for the window to wall ratio from 28.54% to 71.34% with seven options. Analysis results revealed that aperture orientation was more important than its size. The smallest aperture was found to be better for visual, acoustic and thermal comfort. The heating setback strategy appeared to be an effective parameter for thermal comfort as much as the aperture size. A multi-criteria decision-making method, modified weighted sum model, was used to assess the results to decide on the appropriate option and also present a methodology that can be used in different cases.

Automated summary

School environments have a significant impact on students, with the facade playing a crucial role. However, there is a lack of multi-perspective evaluation of facades in existing literature. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to determine appropriate facade aperture sizes through a case study of a primary school classroom.