Natural ventilation is an important building passive cooling technology to reduce energy consumption, overheating risk and promote sustainability in the built environment. Our traditional approach for designing natural ventilation is for an isolated building, but in reality no building is isolated but closely interacts with other buildings especially in dense urban environments. With rapid global urbanization, more than 50% population now live in cities, and it will be projected to be 70% by 2050. Therefore, natural ventilation cooling potential is highly restricted and influenced by urban climate (e.g., reduced wind speeds, elevated air temperature and air/noise pollution within it). An accurate estimation of natural ventilative cooling potential in an urban area could assist climate-responsive architectural design during the conceptual design stage, for the purpose of minimizing carbon emissions and the delivery of healthy and comfortable living environment.

This workshop is devoted to advance our fundamental scientific knowledge and practical design practice on ventilative cooling in the urban environment. In this 90-min session, we will invite four 15-mins presentations on this topic, followed by 30-min panel discussion.