Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Pariya Faraji ¹
• Mansoureh tahbaz ²
• Seyedeh Faezeh Etemad Sheykhaleslami ³

¹ Department of Building, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shahid Beheshti University

² professor. Department of Building, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shahid Beheshti University

³ Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Malayer University, Malayer, Iran

Abstract

The rapid growth of urbanization, alongside challenges such as climate change and the intensification of urban heat islands, has significantly increased the focus on urban climatology. As a result, there is a growing need to design resilient cities that can mitigate the effects of climate change while also clarifying how microclimates, the urban physical environment, and thermal comfort conditions interact in urban residential areas. Given the limited research on cold climates in previous studies of thermal comfort, this research aims to identify the most effective urban design within cold climates. In this study, we evaluated outdoor thermal comfort in the organically configured urban fabric of Hamadan city. This fabric was used as a baseline for assessing the thermal comfort performance of five different urban morphology alternatives: a two-story linear block, a five-story linear block, a variable continuous linear block, a variable discontinuous linear block, and a variable perimeter block. These alternatives were compared using ENVI-met software to analyze how urban morphology affects physiological equivalent temperature (PET) during both winter and summer seasons. In the winter assessment, Kababian's organic fabric exhibited the highest PET. Among the alternatives, the variable perimeter block also recorded a higher PET. In contrast, during the summer season, the five-story linear block showed better thermal comfort performance than the other alternatives. Additionally, we analyzed the impact of wind speed and shading on PET across six different areas within each alternative. Courtyards with a northeast-southwest orientation recorded the highest PET, while alleys with the same orientation had the lowest PET among the areas investigated.

Keywords

• hermal comfort
• Urban open space
• Urban morphology
• Physiological equivalent temperature (PET)
• ENVI-met

Main Subjects

• Architecture and Urban Design