Urban Climate in Urban Design How Land Use Patterns and Building Types Influence the Urban Comfort
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Urban climate in urban design How land use patterns and building types influence the urban comfort ABSTRACT This paper will argue the importance of Another factor that is often neglected is consider urban climate in the urban the land use pattern -morphology- that spatial quality, improving urban comfort creates the public space. Basically in the public spaces. The main topics there are three main land use patterns taken into consideration were the land in Medellin, Colombia, that influence use patterns and the building types. the character of the public spaces they The role of the architect here takes are: importance in the way to get a sustaintable future. i) Traditional: Courtyard houses ("Indian" laws) ii) Planned: Rowhouses (modern INTRODUCTION pattern) iii)lnformal invasion of land by squat The climatic behavior in any urban ters (transit step). space depends on many factors such as surrounding vegetation, During the architectural design process, the urban furniture -lamps, and benches. building's orientation and the size of roads Traffic signals, small commercial sites, should be taken into account, but most of the time the street orientation is not considered. etc- , the orientation of the space, other There are very wonderful examples in this climatic conditions such as solar radia- matter in traditional architecture, in Mompox, tion and wind direction and speed. located in Magdalena river bank, with hot and Also the shape of the buildings, their humid climate, where the orientation of the height, materials and the width of the streets give the public space very efficient street. climatic conditions all day round. Arquinotas. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Sede Medellín. Facultad de Arquitectura. No. 6 This document tries to deal with the THE CLIMATE OF COLOMBIA idea that if the public space is treated like a volume, made of the facades of Colombia presents a great variety of the structures that contains it, and the climates, and the principal factor that streets, and the roof of that volume, the determinates this is the altitude. The so called "canopy layer" -boundary land rises from sea level up to about between the street "volume" and the 4750m. atmosphere above-, or the trees Basically the country can be divided planted in the street, and this space is into the following climatic regions: transferring climatic conditions to the surrounding buildings through their - Hot and humid along the coast and walls and windows and also through the amazon. the access streets, then it has it's own Hot and dry in the north Caribbean properties which vary'according the coast and south central area. height, the materials and the solar Temperate and Cold and medium radiation and ventilation it has. humid in the Andean region. COLOMBIA Another common classification is: 0-1000m Hot Equatorial Is located in the north western part of Figure 1: Antioquia -Colombia- & Medellin 1000-1500 Medium hot Low Andean South America between the Atlantic Metropolitan Area ,I500-2000 Temperate Medium Andean (Caribbean) and Pacific oceans and 2000-4750 Cold Andean crossed by Andean mountains region in It has about 35.000.000 inhabitants, >4750 Cold Snow the centre of the country and Amazon about 70% lives in cities. The major forest in the south. cities are Santafe de Bogota (Capital) with almost 6.000.000, Medellin and ARCHITECTURE IN COLOMBIA Cali with about 2.500.000 and Barranquilla, Pereira, Cartagena, Santa Two main classification of architecture Marta, Bucaramanga and Manizales has been taken for this study. The with 1.000.000 each. examples are either low income housing or expensive ones, both in land use patterns and types. Traditional Due to great variety of colombian climates and ethnic groups there are many different traditional architecture styles made of different materials. All of them well adapted to the climate conditions al least in essential meaning. The principal heritage, apart from the native ones, came from the Arab house through the Spanish conquerors. It is a patio house that during time has varied in size, and has been decreased for * > 8, economical reasons. There is move towards modern archi- Figure 3: Old Traditional Patio House tecture with a lot of variety in types and morphology (land use pattern) mainly because of economic factors and land development opportunities. There are good recent examples of modern houses following the old patio pattern, which are very SUCC~SS~UI. Figure 2: Traditional and Modern patterns. The low-income housing follows mod- Case sections. ern patterns but not because people like it, but because it is the only afford- able offer. Figure 4: Modem Apartment Modern Medellin. Case study Modern architecture is trying to follow, Medellin and its Metropolitan Area is at least in the used materials, the one of the largest cities in Colombia, traditional examples, like for instance located in the north west part of the using bricks. There are some examples country, its climate is temperate with a of glass curtain fa~adebuildings with average of 22 all year round, also the steel construction system The construc- humidity has an average of 67. The tion system for high rise buildings is, in rain season is during April, May, Jun most of the cases, reinforced concrete for columns and beams, following the and July, but there are some short earthquake norms. Figure 5: Photo and plans of modern patio strong rains during October and houses. November. The urban texture in today's architec- Arch. Laureano Forero 0. ture in Colombia follows the modern The altitude is 1490m over sea level, concepts in most of the cases. Some Energy and Thermal comfort in the latitude is 06.13'N and the differences due to topogrhapic condi- buildings tions and economical aspects, always lonaitude is 75.36'W. trying to follow the traditional patterns. Normally there are not specific rules for As Alberto Saldarriaga Roa says. "One this issue in the city, recently there are of the most interesting aspects in the recently more and more buildings with conceptual field of Latin American artificial climate conditions which what architecture in the past decade has no so common in the past. The main been the moral awareness of the need reason is the high increase of air con- to propose urban and architectural tamination by noise, pollution and dust, approximations from a reinterpretation mainly for traffic problems. of the past and present of Latin America, as an alternative to the offer In housing there is not that kind of generated in the international field of improvements because it is not really Post-Modernity". necessary due to climatic characteris- tics. There are some considerations to be taken into account to betterment the housing climate like materials, orienta- tion and roofs materials quality to improve their performance. Figure 7: Medellin. Aerial view. The Public Space It is important not only to improve the private property conditions but also the public comfort through the urban spatial quality. "It is the space where the common interest shows up" -Victoria Camps-, it is the space where daily events take place, where the people meet and many people spend most of the time, so it is and important place to take care of. Problem Jan FeS Vzr Ap: May Ju.1 J.rt Aug Sep Oci Nov Dec - Climate in Medellin is comfortable but .,h solar radiation can cause discomfort in streets and other public spaces. Figure 6: Climatic Conditions. Architects nowadays don't consider Problem comprehension For the calculations the program climatic conditions in urban design, Literature review Dynamic Energy Response Of beside it doesn't exist regulations in Analysis Buildings -DEROB-. LTH was used. this aspect. Synthesis Diagnosis PROJECT DESCRIPTION The "Indian laws" has very clear rules Alternative solutions for settlements in different climate Plan Three different models have been conditions, width and orientation of the Implementation selected for this study: streets, etc, now a days this rules does Evaluation Model One: Old Traditional patio not exist and follows only traffic patters houses pattern -one story- 5 m height and economical possibilities, same as Not in a lineal way but with many with a street of 5 m width. registers from one building to other. feedback to improve the process. The climate of cities can be modified by Also is taken into account in this meth- urban designers and in the urban heat odology: island, the intensity depends on various The factors: Natural aspects -climatic factors, such as the size and morphol- conditions, slopes-, cultural aspects - ogy of the city. An important geometri- building's typhology-, and political cal factor is the height to width ratio of aspects -norms-, all in time, space and the streets canyons. scale. Hypothesis The themes: Urban theories and housing design aspects -construction The land use pattern affect the climate matter-. Model Two: Modern apartment building conditions, and because the impor- -three stories- 9 m height, three flats), tance of the public space in the daily The concepts: Architectural with a streets of 9 m width -pedestrian life of the communities, some regula- movements -traditional and modern-. paths-. tions should be done. All of them under personals view. It METHOD can be said that it needs to know the Most of the planning and design pro- past, to consolidate the present for cess, follow the sequence of: built the future. Model Three: Modern apartment Traditional: 0-6 ach per hour. Mahoney recommends: -Table building -seven stories- Modern: 0-3 ach per hour. Apendice- 21 m height), with streets of 12 m width. Public space: 40 ach per hour. Layout. Compact courtyards - Thermal properties of materials. planning Surface to cover the public space: Spacing. Open spacing for breeze Fakeglass (emittance back of 1 penetration, but protection from hot and 99).