MASTER PLANNING Dr Bernardo Vazquez – Associate, Buro Happold Consulting Engineers
Human comfort in external spaces
Comfort in urban areas is one of the key ingredients in a successful and sustainable masterplan. This article focuses on the use of microclimate analysis to improve external environments for master planning and presents a series of microclimate studies used to assess the performance of external areas for a hospital located in England.
Wind, natural light and shade, rain, noise and pollution all affect the local conditions which may be improved or worsened by new developments. Building form, orientation, street planning and materialisation all have a part to play in designing for comfort and it is therefore essential that they are considered at an early stage for both buildings and wider master plan proposals. As part of the above, microclimate studies
are carried out at different Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) design stages, to assess the potential use of external recreation, recovery and resting spaces within the healthcare environment. The use of building simulation has
become commonplace to assess the characteristics of environments within and surrounding buildings. Buro Happold follows a multidisciplinary approach that combines many engineering disciplines to achieve this. One of the main disciplines dedicated to the implementation of such methodologies is known as Happold Physics, which works closely with other disciplines – such as sustainability, environment, infrastructure, and acoustics – to fully consider the local
‘The use of building simulation has become commonplace to assess the characteristics of environments within and surrounding buildings.’
90 Figure 1: The predicted and actual shadows produced by the Wakefield Hospital building.
climate at the earliest stage, with continued design support as the project progresses. As these considerations increasingly
become a requirement of client, hospital bodies and planning authorities, it is necessary to work with architects, planning consultants, health authorities, and developers to ensure that design proposals do not adversely affect microclimate. This should be done using a collaborative approach with a combination of design workshops, desk studies, site investigations and computational models to quantify the effects and inform the design. The aim is to develop models that, individually, can be used for many different types of analysis, applying appropriate levels of detail to ensure accurate results within practical costs and timescales. Different researchers have highlighted
over time the importance that outdoor environments are likely to have in the wellbeing and recouperation of hospital patients. Many examples can be found in the past and present through architectural hospital examples in the use of gardens for wellbeing,1
like European medieval
monasteries hospices gardens. Most recently the work of Ulrich2
notes the diverse benefits
that external gardens can bring to hospital patient visitors and staff. It describes how, by exploring the benefits of external spaces on health, refurbished and new hospitals can benefit by bringing forward the opportunities that can improve these environments. This work includes the creation of gardens and
Bernardo Vazquez
Bernardo Vazquez is an Associate working for Buro Happold in the UK, with 25 years of specialisation in building technology, environmental impact assessments, and master planning. His work involves the design and appraisal of comfort on external and internal spaces, wind engineering (pedestrian comfort), and alternative sources of energy.
He has developed and applied the UTCI comfort criteria to the assessment of external spaces for hospitals, city centres, coastal and inland recreational spaces. He is currently involved with government and private planning authorities as well as environmental, sustainability and infrastructure consultants.
IFHE DIGEST 2015
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