Firrbudi aka Lensahijau

By Firrbudi aka Lensahijau

Currently, most of the highrise buildings in Malaysia are using fully air conditioning systems which ducted mechanical systems with heating, cooling and humidity control. Some of them are using zoned type of mixed mode ventilation, but the air conditioned areas are much greater than areas using natural ventilation. Therefore, this scenario leads to high capital and high operating cost for the buildings.  There are also a few examples of high rise office buildings in Malaysia that using partly natural ventilation system such as UMNO Tower in Penang and Mesiniaga Tower in Kuala Lumpur. There are also high-rise condominium towers such as TTDI Plaza, TTDI Residence & Idamen Residence in Kuala Lumpur that were designed to be naturally ventilated. Not forgetting, hundreds of high rise social housing throughout the country that are supposed to be naturally ventilated. However, most of these buildings were transformed to be fully air conditioned either for the whole building or wh...

My journal's abstract is now on 'World Academy Of Science, Engineering And Technology' (WASET) website. Sahabuddin, M. (2014). 'Traditional Values and Their Adaptation in Social Housing Design: Towards A New Typology and Establishment of ‘Air House’ Standard in Malaysia'. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, International Science Index, Architecture and Urban Sciences, 2(11), 247. Check this out through this link http://www.waset.org/abstracts/architecture-and-urban-sciences Thank You!

Conclusions and Recommendations Design Issues As a conclusion, there are some design issues discovered in traditional Malay houses and social housing (Table 42). According to research, materials that are used in Malay houses are more practical and reliable for releasing heat readily, compared to high thermal capacity materials such as bricks and concrete in social housing. These high thermal materials store heat and cause uncomfortably high temperatures at night. The unplanned kampong environment does not block the wind; thus the entire neighbourhood receives a good quality of fresh air. Externally, in modern housing large blocks and long terraces create barriers and air pockets, while internally, the complicated wall arrangements in modern housing block air movement, which leads to an uncomfortable thermal condition. In a traditional Malay house, full-length openings are located at body level, while in modern housing the ...

The Establishment of ‘Air House’ Standard in Malaysia From Passivhaus to ‘Air House’ In Europe, Passivhaus (Passive House) standard has been established to achieve the most suitable thermal comfort condition in a building during winter and summer. According to Audenaert, et al. (2008), ‘ passive house is a type of low-energy building; design is oriented to make maximum exploitation of passive technologies, assuring a comfortable indoor climate during summer and winter without needing any conventional heating or cooling system ’. The passive house concept focuses on airtight insulation that can prevent air infiltration and retain heat in the building. Its aim is to achieve 10 times less heat energy than the same standard designed building (Feist, et al., 2005). Table 33 shows the Passivhaus standard that has to be achieved in order to claim Passivhaus certification in the United Kingdom. Table 34 shows the common construction criter...

Performance Comparison of Theoretical Model (TM) and PHP 2000 Indoor Air Temperature Referring to Table 28, the mean temperatures for both cases in TM are slightly higher than PHP 2000 by 0.3  0 C. Moreover, the maximum temperatures in TM are higher than PHP 2000 with a difference of 3.7  0 C, and the minimum air temperature in TM and PHP 2000 differ by 1.8  0 C. Fondriest Environmental (2012) suggests that when gas molecules move quickly, air temperature will increase and affect other weather parameters such as the rate of evaporation, relative humidity, wind speed and direction. The indoor air temperature is proportional to outside air temperature; therefore, large external openings and louvers that allow air movement into internal spaces contribute to the high temperatures in TM, especially during the day. However, these large openings help to decrease the temperature in TM significantly at night, as suggested by...

Towards A New Typology of Social Housing Design Design Comparison of Theoretical Model (TM) and PHP 2000 A theoretical model (TM) has been developed as an initiator towards sustainable  social housing in Malaysia. The model design is a reflection of the design issues  found in PHP 2000 that were discussed in part 5. The issues of space sizes,  internal circulation, cross ventilation and numbers of openings in PHP 2000 have  been taken into consideration. PHP 2000 and TM have the same overall area of 650  square feet, which is equivalent to 60.38 square metres (JPN, 2006) (Table 25). The  differences between these two are the size of the spaces. In TM the living/dining area  is smaller than in PHP 2000 to allow foyer space in front of the main entrance. This  space has a similar position to the serambi in a Malay house to promote interaction  between neighbourhoods. The other improvement in TM is a larger yard space than  in P...