ARDIENTE

Simplification
The selected concept Solar-Façade was criticised and
the problematic parts were tried to be fixed in the first
place. The concept was a whole façade design, requiring
a lot of advanced engineering, so it was decided to be
reduced to a lighter additional product to be mounted
on the existing façade. Another topic discussed was
whether the shifted order was necessary or not, to turn
the concept into a more generic plug-and-play product.
The initial idea was to have two interdependent
modules serving four rooms at two storeys, one above
another. It was proposed to reduce the whole solar
chimney concept to one storey solution. The advantage
of having a high solar chimney is the ability to use the
solar chimney to extract air from a room in summer
and to use the trapped hot air in the room above. The
additional height would also ensure the adequacy of
pressure difference for the mechanism to function. So
it was decided to go on with the two-storey alternative.
DESIGN
DESIGN PROCESS
Ventilation
There are opposite views on either natural or
mechanical ventilation is to be preferred in hospital
buildings. Natural ventilation needs lower capital,
operational and maintenance costs. It can achieve a
high ventilation rate and has a large range of control
of the environment by occupants. As a downside,
it is more difficult to predict and design. Mechanical
ventilation is usually preferred due to its suitability
for all climates and weather with air-conditioning
for a more controlled and comfortable environment.
Yet inadequate ventilation may lead to a widely seen
phenomenon called sick building syndrome. Taking all
these criteria into account, hybrid ventilation, which
relies on natural driving forces to provide the desired
flow rate, using mechanical ventilation when the
natural ventilation flow rate is too low, maybe a proper
solution. However, many hospitals have regulations that
ban natural ventilation, so trapped heat was decided to
be used in an indirect way in the rooms, restricting the
airflow to be only from the room. This was where heat
exchangers were introduced to extract the heat from
the air in the chimneys. The hot air would heat the water
running through them and the hot water would either
be used in the wall type radiators that are behind them
immediately or collected first in a centralised system
and distributed therefrom. These two were decided to
be kept as options.
FIGURE 9: BUILDING APPLICATION
Size
Solar chimneys rely on the pressure difference inside
the room and inside the chimney. For adequate
pressure difference which extracts the air from the
room, solar chimneys are built higher than the space
they serve. In this case, chimneys are thus designed
two storeys high and placed in a vertically shifted order
between two rooms for maximum efficiency.
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