NATURAL VENTILATION ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN FOR PASSIVE COOLING IN A MULTI-PURPOSE BUILDING DEVELOPMENT IN CALABAR CITY, NIGERIA: A TECHNICAL REPORT

Abstract

The clients are desirous to develop their plot of land in Calabar City, Nigeria, into a multi-purpose building of low-energy demand and environmental friendly, characterized by the capacity of each spatial unit to be naturally ventilated and as such passively cooled. The architectural design evolved for natural ventilation passive cooling was underscored by a search for multipurpose spaces which when put together as one building would enhance the capacity of each spatial unit to provoke indoor airflow behavior which would modify indoor thermal conditions, enabled and sustained by a central courtyard, in all parts of the building. The architectural design concept hovers around the principles of typical traditional courtyard-built-forms as a source of deriving passive design strategies on spatial unit basis. The result which is a “breathing building” phenomenon, with wind-driven and buoyance as main features, is a perfect substitute to the normal, conventional cross-ventilation method as always known in Nigeria.