Dr. Anupama Sharma, Department of Architecture & Plng, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal (INDIA)

Introduction

A building with a good thermal performance establishes an indoor environment which nearly approaches comfort conditions in a given climatic setting. In architectural term, this means that the planning and structure of a building should utilise natural possibilities to improve comfort conditions with out the aid of mechanical devices.

It is evident that any improvement exercised by the building itself will show up in the promotion of comfort, which is difficult to define exactly. In other words; any heat energy captured in the under heated periods will reduce heating costs; and any quantity of heat kept from reaching the interiors in overheated times will lesson the expenditure for cooling. There are many studies of thermal design in vernacular architecture (Bahadori, 1978;Watson, 1976;) but as Markus (1980) & Vinod Kumar in 1984 has pointed out it is not sufficient to have a qualitative understanding of such buildings. To develop confidence in the passive heating and cooling methods we need data to know the kind temperatures and thermal environment that prevails in vernacular buildings. Combined with the pattern of building usage, such data can be an indicator of the level of thermal comfort that was provided by the buildings in question.

In order to strengthen the above facts thermal performance study of the selected buildings were carried out. This was done through on site monitoring of the climatic parameters like Air temperature, Air velocity, Relative humidity etc.

Approach

The case studies, its critical appraisal are the major part of any Research to identify and simulate the findings for its practical use. The city of Lucknow has been selected for the case studies due to the follows main reasons.

1. India’s major population is in composite climate zone in which the city of Lucknow lies. Thus findings will be benefited to a large population.

2. Keeping with the tradition of learning from traditions, the major accent of research is on historical buildings. The Lucknow is India’s one of the famous historical city with its rich architectural heritage.