This research presents an innovative approach to modeling and predicting the heating and
cooling demands of buildings using a simple and fast data-driven model. The research is set
within the context of Model Predictive Control (MPC) systems, which optimize building energy
use by predicting variables and adjusting control inputs accordingly, embodying the principles of industrial ecology by integrating technical, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability; enhancing energy efficiency, reducing CO2 emissions, and improving occupant comfort, which are key goals of industrial ecology. From the available modelling methods:
white, black, and grey box models, to model and predict the heating and cooling demand, a grey box model: multivariate linear regression model with as input actual data selected based on the thermal energy balance and Pearson correlation coefficients. A case study on two rooms: an office and a classroom in the Haagse Hogeschool in Delft serves as the practical application of the developed model. Several models are developed; static and dynamic models, and using different independent variables; indoor surface temperature, outdoor temperature, indoor air temperature, internal heat gains, wind speed and solar light intensity. An accuracy, expressed in the R2 value between 22.52% and 78.57% is achieved with modelling the heating and cooling demand. The developed models are not able to predict the heating and cooling demand, due to multicollinearity between independent variables, overfitting and endogeneity.

Current building operations can be improved through smart predictive operation based on weather and use patterns in order to save energy with minimal impact on the building fabric and daily use. The existing literature has investigated implementations, and potential savings through combining with variable tariffs, however, this thesis addresses the issue of how different buildings differ in their suitability for such smart control.

In this thesis, a digital twin of a school is created and adjusted to test differences in building fabric factors. These are combined with multiple Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agents, which are trained to operate the schools more efficiently by controlling the heating set-point as well as natural ventilation of the buildings in order to save energy while maintaining comfort. The DRL agents vary in their ability to observe future weather as well as their internal network model architecture.

The results show a high energy saving compared to a simple baseline, despite the few building controls available to the agents. In addition, some algorithms out-compete even rule-based controllers, which were tested as a stricter baseline. The results also confirm a theory revealed through the literature review, that buildings with higher energy input, storage and control have a larger potential for energy savings. Additionally, the types of DRL models used also greatly influences the agents’ ability to perform well, and generally more advanced models performed better. The findings can be used to access a building’s suitability for and potential benefits from such predictive smart control.

Researches have been conducted to involve the sustainability of energy in the building's early design stage. The methods used include the IEF-based method, the BIM-API-based method, and other approaches. However, these methods have not helped architects out in the early design stage since the complexity of the assessment is not decreased.

The contradiction of increasingly complex energy simulations and early conceptual designs forms a research gap in energy optimization. As changes in the early design stage have more effect on the buildings and make less cost, the introduction of on-the-fly energy assessment in the early stages is of great importance.

This thesis developed a framework to help boost energy efficiency in building design. The framework aims to improve the efficiency of energy assessment by providing simultaneous and on-the-fly energy performance assessment of the design. BIM software Revit and the visual programming environment Grasshopper were integrated via Rhino.Inside, a bridge between the BIM environment and others to perform the assessment. The workflow of the framework contains three parts: data input from BIM models and the determination method NTA 8800, the connection by Rhino.Inside and the computation of the Grasshopper script, the final results, and the report produced by the Grasshopper script.

A script in Grasshopper as a demonstration of the framework was developed as such that Revit models can be directly linked to the energy analysis, and the results can be returned simultaneously. The script was created based on a preliminary case study and two sets of studies were conducted to validate it. The case study of a tiny house was first investigated to test and validate the developed tool. The energy demand result of the developed tool has only a 3% difference for the case study calculated via Uniec 3, a verified software used in the Netherlands.

The developed tool was also validated through 4 variants with different configurations to find out if the tool is accurate and robust enough concerning dimensions and physical properties. The comparison of the results shows that the developed tool can produce steadily accurate results that vary within 5% from the standard outcome. In addition, the study indicates the framework's potential of optimizing the building's performance on energy efficiency as the proposed framework significantly shortens the time and workload compared to Uniec 3 which requires a body of manual input.

The study in this thesis integrates the BIM models and energy analysis to enhance the sustainability concept in the building design industry. It fills the gap in the application of semi-automated BIM to the BEM framework in the early design stage of buildings. The developed framework provides a useful tool and practical benefits to the field of energy efficiency. This study investigated the potential of applying on-the-fly energy assessment in early design stage, which could be developed further in future work to explore more or better solutions.

Efficient local air recirculation at ceiling level promote the performance of purifiers and anti-epidemic efficiency of mixing ventilation in a small shared rooms

The world is increasingly urbanised. Especially in those countries that are in rapid development, the migration to the city is extreme. This is the case for Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. Its population growth exceeds the number of newly built housing, and the housing that exists is unfit for a majority of the urban population. People create their own solution and move to informal neighbourhoods: neighbourhoods where they build their own houses and earn their money on the streets.

While the conditions in the informal settlements are far from optimal, people can live their life and create their own opportunities. Somehow, they make a living that they cannot make in formal housing units: either due to the rent they cannot afford to pay, or due to the inability to earn an income in the way they do in the informal neighbourhood. In this way of living the life in the informal neighbourhoods, temporality plays an important role. People are versitale, can adapt to different situations, different circumstances. They can build up a process, starting something from scratch with the resilience to improve it, one step at the time. The streets are vital: pedestrian flows are economic opportunities. Converting any moment, any place into an opportunity that fits the situation the best: from a kitchen to a shop through the window, from a outdoor stall to an outdoor cooking spot, from a place of moving and travelling, to a place for gathering and meeting. Spaces can transform, dwellings can transform, adapt to circumstances, adapt to serve the opportunity that seems most succesful. It is this temporal element that makes them resilient.

But these people are also vulnerable. With the current neighbourhood conditions, a lack of good quality housing, a lack of a well patterned street-network, a lack of services and hygiene, a lack of legal ownership, the dangers are clearly visible: fire, flooding, eviction and disease are potential enemies, created by their living situation. These people, of which there are so many in a city like Addis Ababa, deserve a home that caters their needs, actively engages them to use their abilities to improve their neighbourhood with the right acces to services, streets, economic opportunties. How can we use the theme of temporality to create such dwellings?

In this project, a built environment is envisioned that combines the informal way of living (earning an income, having social relations), with a good quality of dwelling. It provides a framework in which people can built their dwellings tehmselves, keeping them affodable, and being able to constantly adapt the home to what they need most. It generates outside space as well as people flows on lower as well as higher levels to increase the economic opportunities for all of the people living in the area.

There is an urgent need for technical innovations in the construction industry to meet the European Parliament’s qualifications for reducing the energy footprint of buildings. This thesis is devoted to conducting research on control strategies that optimally manage passive energy sources, e.g., natural ventilation and solar irradiance, in combination with an active energy source. The main objective is to develop a control strategy that is both on-line applicable and maximizes the performance of the building energy management system in terms of passive fraction of energy while maintaining indoor thermal comfort. Energy-saving model predictive control (MPC) structures have been extensively researched in the literature on building energy management systems. These studies usually focus on the energy distribution in multi-zoned buildings and rarely consider optimal control of a single or multiple passive energy sources. In addition, most studied building models are based on general buildings and are established by means of simulation software tools. A more experimental study has not yet been conducted on optimal energy management systems for a building that is maximized in harvesting passive energy. This work investigates five MPC strategies as a way to optimize the operations of four solar blinds, a thermal chimney, and an active energy source. In these strategies, linear and nonlinear MPC are considered in the forms of centralized and hierarchical architectures. White-box modeling and linearization methods are adopted to develop the required linear and nonlinear building models. Thereafter, the proposed modeling methodology is validated by using experimental data. The hierarchical MPC architecture that considers a hybrid structure with a linear MPC agent for solar blind operations, a nonlinear MPC tracker for ventilation, a linear Kalman filter, and separated state-update loops appears to be the best-performing strategy. This control structure is also applied in a case study, in which it is tested on experimental data from the real-case office building, which is controlled by a rule-based control structure. The results show that the developed control structure is able to outperform the rule-based controller in terms of minimizing energy consumption and maintaining thermal comfort.

New building technologies are developing rapidly, the use of sensors and actuation with it. These technological developments provide opportunities for buildings to react to their environment in real time. Hence, reducing the energy demand of the built environment which is critical in addressing the issue of climate change. However, there is a distinct lack of human-centered interfaces, leading to discomfort among occupants This not only results in discomfort, such as visual discomfort experienced due to an oversupply of light, but also a reduction in productivity. In this thesis, a novel dynamic building shading technology is discussed, and the occupant is added directly into the control loop, to discover their preferences, and to avoid visual discomfort and glare. Hence, the main posed research question of this graduation project states: “How can an automated system, consisting of switchable glazing and a system that can sense the needs of the occupant, be used to control glare in an effective manner?” An effective manner of controlling the switchable glazing should both minimise glare, the negative sensation associated with the oversupply of light, and, optimise the use of daylight. The occupant’s facial expression and micro-movements and a lux sensor are combined in a new control strategy, to sense visual discomfort in real-time. Previous studies are analysed to create an office-like environment to test this hypothesis, seeing whether it is possible to predict if one is experiencing glare by one’s facial movements. Two experimental studies are conducted, (i) the first experiment to determine the physical characteristics of the experiment room and (ii) the second experiment to test the novel control system. During the second experiment, a benchmark control strategy and the novel control strategy are tested in the office-like environment and the results are compared. The results from the facial movements show that, in particular, eyebrow movements, may be triggered by light. The results express the potential of adding the face to a control strategy for controlling the amount of light transmitted through the glazing. However, after evaluating the effectiveness of the system, its benefits in terms of daylight and improved availability of view are not clear. For now, at least, in its prototype form, the novel system appeared to be no worse than the benchmark. The desired goal is an interaction between the user and switchable glazing, providing a personal comfortable indoor environment, whilst optimizing the usage of daylight. To reach this, more data has to be collected, however, the following key improvements are suggested; (i) gathering the occupant’s response regarding the level of discomfort immediately (in real-time),(ii) the matter of how to improve the potential for each individual to have their own system is investigated, (iii) the light should be measured via more sensors in different places (for instance fixed to the wall). It should be measured in real-time to determine which one is most beneficial. Furthermore, relation ought to be considered with the architectural design of the building. (iv) The experimental set up mirrors an actual office building to enhance the correlation of the data gathered during such experimental studies, also to study the data with real sunlight, the most common source of glare

A community for young people to settle down in the city, where they can meet friends and enjoy a happy balanced life. It provides living facilities with quality as well as possibilities for social life. A natural controllable indoor climate and a flexible structure system are integrated within the design which achieves good integration of the architectural elements and the energy-efficient system. It advocates natural ventilation and using natural resources. The concrete megastructure acts as the first layer to support the building while the infilling wooden elements create different spaces based on the function, and they can be moved to a new position if the future function changed. So that the flexible structure system provides small spaces for living as well as big spaces for social events and working.

A big part of the schools in Greece fails to align with the regulations suggested by The School Building Organization in Greece, regarding their energy performance as well as the thermal and daylight comfort they offer. This study aims to inform the retrofit process of these schools, by proposing guidelines concerning the most impactful interventions in their passive design measures. For this, a Building Energy Simulation and Optimization method (BESO), was carried out. Such a method introduces multi-objective optimizations, which can help identify design solutions that need to satisfy multiple and possibly conflicting objectives. The optimizations were carried out separately for all three major climate zones of the country, using a typical classroom-corridor topology as a simulation model. The most impactful variables were extracted for each zone, along with a set of generated design solutions.

Due to the strong increase in densification in cities worldwide and the takeover of infrastructure, the public domains in the city often lose their intrinsic tranquility. In a bustling working city like Rotterdam, the public quiet and social places are under pressure. The focus of this graduation plan lies on the urban neighborhoods Bospolder and Tussendijken, characterized by many different nationalities, ages and backgrounds, which often causes mutual misunderstanding and frustration among residents. From the field analysis and research it emerged that there is a lack of quiet social meeting places in the neighborhood. In this graduation plan a distinction is made between the hard and the Soft City. The Soft City is characterized by soft architecture that invites its users to appropriate the space and in this way enters into a relationship with its users. The hard city shows itself in the entire planned city; the almost inhuman city. The focus of the graduation research and design is on the 'Soft City': a changeable intermedia between people and architecture. The addition of a new soft elements, based on the idea of 'the Soft City', could strengthen the identity, peace and connection amongst citizens of the districts and thus offer a solution to the mutual misunderstanding, feelings of insecurity and frustration among residents. The design assignment will result in three interventions of public quiet meeting places at different scale levels in the urban fabric of Bospolder/Tussendijken.

In the past decades Mumbai has experienced a huge increase of citizens who, drawn by the economic opportunities of the big city, come to Mumbai for chances of a better life. The city is struggling with the effects that this has on the city. A big part of its population reside in informal settlements, living under impoverished circumstances. This graduationproject revolves around improving these circumstances through the development and design of durable, affordable, qualitative social housing that is able to reach high densities while maintaining a qualitative level of living.

The topic of this graduation project is the design of an adaptive fabric façade for a high-rise in Paris. The stimulus for this choice was the turn of nowadays towards lightweight materials and constructions, a trend that is growing tremendously. Glass façades always remain popular and are frequently used in all kinds of buildings. For instance, a great quantity of glass is used in curtain walls. Therefore, following the need of research for lightweight materials, alternatives for glass are being investigated and membranes can be an interesting solution. They offer a number of possibilities and have many advantages, such as a variety of transparency levels and the fact that they are extremely lightweight materials. Furthermore, this graduation project concerns an office building, which is a rather demanding building type, as it requires a building envelope that offers a high level of indoor comfort, in terms of thermal and acoustical insulation, as well as efficient solar control. Thus, taking all the above into account and the global growing interest towards membranes, which are mostly used as roof components until now, the decision of exploring the potential of such materials as the main part of a building envelope for an open-plan office building in Paris was taken.

The graduation research has an experimental character, as it tackles several issues of a possible membrane façade element and it tries to answer the questions that are being raised throughout of the development of this thesis. Firstly, a literature research is conducted on the available materials, their physical and mechanical properties, their production and connection methods, their advantages and drawbacks in general. Subsequently, design aspects are taken into consideration concerning the building envelope and physical models are constructed in order to visualise the design. Furthermore, hand calculations are conducted for the thermal and acoustical performance of the under study membrane façade element and then software simulations are made in order to validate the results. Moreover, an actual acoustical test is attempted with several difficulties, though, that will be described later on. Finally, conclusions are drawn concerning the whole research and design. As it is evident in the end, although the proposed solution is proved to be rather successful, there is still space for improvement, as well as further research and development.