IMPACT OF URBAN MORPHOLOGY ON THE ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF TIRANA NEW BOULEVARD PROJECT

Abstract

The reason why Smart Cities is a very popular topic amongst researchers is because they provide effective and efficient ways of collecting, managing and distributing resources to their residents. Energy-efficiency is a major contributor of sustainable cities, that affects the end-consumer directly. It plays a vital role on a persons’ economical expenses. This study focuses on the importance that urban morphology plays towards the energy efficiency by analyzing four different urban fabrics within the New Boulevard project in Tirana. The selection of these four zones was made considering that they cover a significant percentage area of the overall site, properly represent the predominant building and district morphologies and any results reflected about these areas will have a notable significance for the site on the whole. It achieves this by measuring 8 different urban morphology indicators (UMIs): Gross space index, Floor space index, Façade-to-site ratio, Average building height, Volume area ratio, Building aspect ratio, Sky factor of building facades, Open space ratio. These UMIs are gathered as important statistical data and serve as a comparison ground for the four districts between them. For this study AutoCAD 3D is used to model the site and prepare the file for CitySim Pro, Revit Architecture for modeling the site envelope and later run a solar analysis with Insight Plugin for Revit, and CitySim Pro software to investigate and optimize the energy efficiency parameters. The results of this study serve as a role model for the contemporary buildings of the future in Tirana especially after considering that no previous observations of this nature that take the Mediterranean climate into account are made here.