Computational Civil Engineering (CCE 2021) IOP Publishing

IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1141 (2021) 012001 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1141/1/012001

The influence of the architecture form in the performance

analysis of a passive house in Moldavia
A Cojocaru¹, D N Isopescu¹
¹“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, Faculty of Civil Engineering and
Building Services, Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, 1, Prof. Dr. docent
Dimitrie Mangeron Blvd., Iasi, 700050, Romania

E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Over time, a building's energy consumption in the use phase was not decisive in the
design process. However, in recent years, energy efficiency and energy autonomy have become
a defining criteria in buildings' performance. In 2020, residential buildings became the space
for rest, recreation, personal activities, but also for professional activities. Thus, it is essential
to ensure optimal temperature, air, humidity and psychological comfort due to architectural
quality. The passive house concept sets the maximum allowable energy consumption to heat
the building and limit the total primary energy consumption. Passive houses improve energy-
efficient buildings by ensuring a comfortable indoor environment in all seasons without
requiring a conventional heat distribution system. Based on local characteristics, creating and
analysing model study cases is important and could solve cities' fast development. The shape of
a building influences the solar input and the total energy consumption through the total surface
exposed to the outside and subject to heat loss. In order to gain knowledge about the influence
of the buildings' form on energy balance, this paper presents a case study of simple shape
buildings with numerical analysis according to the passive house principles in the Moldavia
area of Romania. The case study of a parallelepiped model with various dimensions, varying
aspect ratio and storey, was made with the planning tool Passive House Planning Package. The
conclusions suggest further case studies with various roof shapes and windows' areas.

1. Introduction
One of the basic needs of life, shelter or housing, is closely connected with the natural environment.
From the perspective of Le Corbusier, a French architect, the home is "a cover that meets certain
requirements and establishes fair relationships between the cosmic environment and human biological
phenomena"[1]. The concept of housing is a complex system of functional structures arranged
according to certain relationships (individual - family - social), which function and evolve.
People spend most of their time in a home, where safety, well-being, peace, comfort are the
essential elements we are looking for. Along with the components of image, perception and
philosophy itself, psychological and sociological, somatic and sensory factors are equally important,
defining the state of the comfort of the human body: light intensity, air temperature and humidity, air
quality itself (freshness, concentration of various substances and odours), movement of air currents,
noise and vibration, factors that must it fall within specific value ranges in order to maintain our well-
being and hygiene at high standards. The human body, as a biological organism, physically feels a
state of comfort. The air temperature should be 20-25° Celsius in an indoor space, the relative
humidity 45-55%, the carbon dioxide concentration below 500ppm and 30mc of fresh air per hour.
The natural environment must not influence the constancy of these elements. One of the critical roles
of any construction, besides the aesthetic and functional, is the guarantor of comfort and well-being at
the physical level.
The first step in designing an energy-efficient house should be a rational passive design, focused on
climate conditions, the building's form and orientation, offering good thermal and living comfort, even
without active systems. Implementing passive solar design principles in an architectural project
determines a significant reduction of energy consumption throughout the life cycle of a building
without a significant impact on the initial investment or maintenance costs. Simultaneously, strategies

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution
of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
Computational Civil Engineering (CCE 2021) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1141 (2021) 012001 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1141/1/012001

specific to passive design can be easily integrated into a contemporary architectural solution. The
building’s form influences the energy balance of the building. The compact form is preferred in many
cases, defined by a small shape factor (defined as the ratio between the envelope surface (A) and the
building volume (V)). Also, another parameter important in the energy balance is the aspect ratio
defined by the ratio between length and width of the building.
The residential field is well documented and studied from the point of view of energy efficiency.
Energy consumption of residential buildings increases worldwide by about 30% annually [2]. Because
of this, the residential buildings had priority in implementing energy efficiency concepts.

2. Passive House
Passive House is a concept of energy-efficient buildings, presented by Dr Wolfgang Feist from the
Passive House Institute in Germany, which has had the most outstanding impact on architects,
customers and researchers. The concept sets the maximum allowable energy consumption for heating
the building and limits the total primary energy consumption. The passive house standard is met if a
building has a heating energy consumption under 15kWh/m²yr and a total energy requirement of a
maximum 120kWh/m²yr [3]. Passive houses improve low-energy houses by ensuring a comfortable
indoor environment in all seasons without requiring a conventional heat distribution system [3].
According to J Schnieders, W Feist and L Rongen [4], passive houses use 80% - 90% less energy for
heating than conventional buildings for the same interior space conditions for an additional cost of up
to 10%. Unfortunately, most new constructions in Romania have heating energy consumption over
150kWh/m²yr, ten times higher than Passive Houses. According to the Passive House Database, there
are 22 certified passive house buildings in Romania, built from 2008 till 2021. The number increases
as energy-efficient buildings become a mandatory standard.
Passive House Planning Package, an Excel-based calculation program, was first launched in 1998
and is constantly evolving to verify the buildings' compliance with the Passive House standards.
Calculation sheets for the energy balance (annual and monthly), for the distribution and supply of
heating and the need for electricity and primary energy, are the main elements of this calculation tool.
Also, calculations are analysed regarding the windows' characteristic values, the impact of shading, the
heating load and the demand for cooling and dehumidification.

3. Review of studies for the influence of architecture form in energy efficiency balance
The shape of a building influences the solar input and the total energy consumption through the total
surface exposed to the outside and subject to heat loss. In the design of a building, the ratio between its
external surface and the total volume must be minimal, the ideal case being a hemisphere. Due to the
problems of designing the interior space of a hemisphere, many researchers have conducted studies of
the performance of parallelepiped buildings, followed by optimizations related to the planimetric
shape (square, rectangle, hexagon, octagon, oval).
Studies on the shape of buildings and the outdoor climate have been made: research on the shape of
the building based on passive strategies that provide the comfort of the interior [5], research on the use
of the sun for heating [6] and research on the effect of urbanization on urban climate - the effect of the
island of urban heat [7]. In the study conducted by M Premrov, M Žigart and V Žegarac Leskovar [8],
216 models of box-type buildings were analysed parametrically, with wooden frame structure, with
variations on thermal transmittance, size of glazed areas, orientation, the ratio of facades, horizontal
and vertical volumetric extension in several cities: Ljubljana, Helsinki, Munich, London, Athens and
Madrid. The size of the glazed surfaces and their positioning linearly influence the energy balance,
and the shape of the building has an impact on the building's energy efficiency.
The rapid development of cities requires a detailed study of buildings' shape, from micro to macro
scale. Okeil A., in his article “A holistic approach to energy-efficient building forms” [9], highlights
the lack of sets of design guidelines for achieving energy-efficient forms of construction throughout
the year, forms that can create building blocks to increase the performance of the whole city. The
analysis compares three types of residential neighbourhoods at a latitude of 48 degrees, as shown in

2
Computational Civil Engineering (CCE 2021) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1141 (2021) 012001 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1141/1/012001

figure 1: Linear, block (conventional) and RSB (Residential Solar Block - energy efficient). The
residential solar block (RSB) is an energy-efficient form of construction, optimized to avoid winter
shading, functional and aesthetic. Several types of housing can be organized in RSB: apartments,
garden apartments (on the roof of other apartments), terraced houses. The analysis results highlight the
advantages of the RSB form: functional, versatile, social, aesthetic, high sun exposure, increased
airflow, the possibility of green roofs in direct connection with housing [9].
The main output of the current study and these previous studies is to offer architects general
information on buildings' energy-efficient design parameters.

Figure 1. Three types of residential neighbourhoods: linear, block, RSB [9]

4. Numerical study
The presented numerical research is based on a case study of a parallelepiped model with various
dimensions (square plan vs linear plan, one-story house vs two-story house) made of good thermal
envelope elements (U=0,10W/ m²K), with windows on the south façade of the buildings but also on
west and east. The study analyses the energy performance in the Moldavian Area of Romania, in the
North-East of Romania, with characteristics of temperate climate, hill area, detailed in Table 1.

Table 1. Climate conditions in the Moldavian Area of Romania

UM Values
Average annual temperature °C -10 / +30
Maximum positive outdoor temperature °C +28
Maximum negative outdoor temperature °C -13
Length of the heating period days/year 190
Total solar radiation on the south vertical surface in the heating period kWh/ m² 380
Total solar radiation on the west/east vertical surface in the heating period kWh/ m² 200

The study was made with the planning tool Passive House Planning Package to calculate energy
flows and energy needs for heating and cooling. The planning tool PHPP 9 is based on EN ISO 13790,
which shows high levels of precision and accuracy in calculating energy balances.
The first comparison is between two single-storey models with a constant occupied floor area of 64
m², a constant heated volume of 192 m³ and a varying aspect ratio (the ratio between length and
width): a square plan (1A) and a linear plan (1B). Both models have a constant window surface of
50% of the south façade. The first model, with the square plan, has the heating energy consumption
22,7kWh/m²yr and the thermal load of 16,2W/ m², while the second model, with the south façade

3
Computational Civil Engineering (CCE 2021) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1141 (2021) 012001 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1141/1/012001

larger than the western and eastern one, has the heating energy consumption 22,9kWh/m²yr and the
thermal load remain 16,2W/ m². The aspect ratio of the first model (1) is slightly preferred rather than
the aspect ratio of the second one (1,52), as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. First comparison – model 1A and model 1B

S
Frequency
t South West East Heating
Aspect Thermal of the
o Area Volume Wind Wind Wind Energy
Nr. Shape ratio Load overheating
r (m²) (m³) ows ows ows Consumption
(L/W) (W/ m²) period
e (%) (%) (%) (kWh/m²yr)
(%)
y

1A 1 64 192 1 50 0 0 22,7 16,2 40,4

1B 1 64 192 1,52 50 0 0 22,9 16,2 40,2

The second comparison is between two models: a single-storey model (1A) and a two-storey model
(2A) with a constant occupied floor area of 64 m² and a constant heated volume of 192 m³. The
previous calculations indicated that the first model, a single-storey with a square plan, has a heating
energy consumption 22,7kWh/m²yr and a thermal load of 16,2W/ m². In comparison, the two-storey
model, with the same occupied area floor and the same window surface, has the heating energy
consumption 20,5kWh/m²yr and the thermal load of 14W/m², as shown in Table 3. The results show
that the two-storey houses are preferred rather than single-storey ones. Besides, if choosing to design a
single-storey house to gain solar radiation, the area of the south-oriented window should be larger than
in two-storey house designs.

Table 3. Second comparison – model 1A and model 2B

S
Frequency
t South West East Heating
Aspect Thermal of the
o Area Volume Wind Wind Wind Energy
Nr. Shape ratio Load overheating
r (m²) (m³) ows ows ows Consumption
(L/W) (W/ m²) period
e (%) (%) (%) (kWh/m²yr)
(%)
y

1A 1 64 192 1 50 0 0 22,7 16,2 40,4

2A 2 64 192 1 50 0 0 20,5 14 40,7

The third comparison is between four single-storey models with a constant occupied floor area of
64 m², a constant heated volume of 192 m³ and a varying window's position: only on the south façade
of the building (1A), on south and east façades (3A), on the south and west facades (3B) and on south,

4
Computational Civil Engineering (CCE 2021) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1141 (2021) 012001 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1141/1/012001

east and west facades (3C). The previous calculations indicated that the first model, a single-storey
with square plan and windows only on the south façade, has a heating energy consumption
22,7kWh/m²yr and a thermal load of 16,2W/ m². The second model, with the same area and volume
but with windows also on the west façade (16% of the west façade), has the heating energy
consumption 24,4kWh/m²yr and the thermal load of 17,4W/ m². The frequency of the overheating
period also increased by 3,6%. The third model, with the same area and volume, but with windows on
the south façade (50% of the south façade) and on east façade (16% of the east façade), has the same
heating energy consumption (24,4kWh/m²yr) and thermal load (17,4W/ m²). The fourth model, with
the same area and volume, but with windows on the south façade (50% of the south façade), on east
façade (16% of the east façade) and west façade (16% of the west façade), has the heating energy
consumption 26,1kWh/m²yr and the thermal load of 18,7W/ m². The frequency of the overheating
period also increased by 6,3%. The results of this third comparison conclude that the glazing areas are
better placed on the south-oriented building envelope to obtain an increased share of solar gains useful
for the building's passive heating. However, a good and evenly distributed natural illumination is also
influenced by space's comfort factor, gained by positioning some windows on other building facades
(west and east facade).

Table 4. Third comparison – model 1A and model 2B

Nr. Shape S Area Volume Aspect South West East Heating Thermal Frequency
t (m²) (m³) ratio Wind Wind Wind Energy Load of the
o (L/W) ows ows ows Consumption (W/ m²) overheating
r (%) (%) (%) (kWh/m²yr) period
e (%)
y

1A 1 64 192 1 50 0 0 22,7 16,2 40,4

3A 1 64 192 1 50 0 16 24,4 17,4 43,6

3B 1 64 192 1 50 16 0 24,4 17,4 43,6

3C 1 64 192 1 50 16 16 26,1 18,7 46,3

The essential heat source is solar energy, which heats the indoor air through incident solar
radiation. The percentage of glazing area in the south façade was kept constant in the first two
comparisons. The windows' characteristics were chosen to assure a high level of heat insulation and
light transmission: Ug=0,50W/ m²K, Uf=0,73W/ m²K, g=0,52. If the overheating period's frequency is
over 10%, the solution is the shading systems, such as vegetation, roof consoles, light exterior window
shading systems, that reduce by 10% to 40% of the energy required for cooling (Maleki, 2011). The
use of vegetation (trees, intensive vegetation, green facades, green roof) offers increased comfort to
building users through shading, protection against wind, pollution and noise. Planting deciduous trees
and shrubs, which shade the southern side of buildings, reduces the temperature by 5 degrees Celsius
on the thermal envelope's surface (Kamal, 2012). Evergreen trees are planted on the west and east
sides to protect the building from wind and sun at sunrise and sunset.

5
Computational Civil Engineering (CCE 2021) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1141 (2021) 012001 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1141/1/012001

5. Conclusions
The general conclusion from the presented study and the reviewed studies is that the building shape
influences the energy balance. The presented study results can lead to optimal design solutions for
single and two-storey houses with a constant floor area and a varying building aspect ratio and storey.
The general results' benefit is to set basic guidelines for architects for a quick estimation of buildings'
energy performance, designed in different shapes.
The recommendations for the climate area of the Moldavian Area in Romania are to design
compact forms with an aspect ratio near 1, with at least two storeys and small windows on west and
east facades. Generalizing, those guidance lines could work on almost all zones of cold temperate
climate areas.
There are still a series of parameters which is recommended to be further analysed. The south-
oriented window ratio could vary as the house's interior space is designed, and it can influence the
energy balance. Furthermore, in Romania's climate condition, a flat roof is not recommended. It would
also be helpful to analyse a similar case with a slope roof and roof windows, as the zenithally light
makes a significant contribution to well-being.

6. References
[1] Le Corbusier 1963 Maniere de penser l'urbanisme Gonthier
[2] Allouhi A, El Fouih Y, Kousksou T, Jamil A, Zeraouli Y, Mourad Y 2015 Energy consumption
and efficiency in buildings: current status and future trends Journal of Cleaner Production
109 118-130
[3] Passive House Planning. Package 2007 – specifications for quality approved passive houses.
Passive House Institute
[4] Schnieders J, Feist W, Rongen L 2015 Passive Houses for different climate zones Energy and
Buildings 105 71-87
[5] Olgyay V 1963 Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism
Princeton University Press
[6] Knowles RL 1981 Sun Rhythm Form MIT Press Cambridge MA
[7] Oke TR 1978 Boundary Layer Climates Methuen&CO Ltd
[8] Premrov M, Žigart M, Žegarac Leskovar V 2018 Influence of the building shape on the energy
performance of timber-glass buildings located in warm climatic regions Energy 149 496–
504
[9] Okeil A 2010 A holistic approach to energy efficient building forms Energy and Building 42
1437-1444

6
Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction
prohibited without permission.