Building Orientation as the Primary Design Consideration for Climate Responsive Architecture in Urban Areas

Orientation is a design parameter that plays a major role in climate responsive architecture and helps achieve comfort within the built environment. However, it is difficult to achieve an ideal orientation, especially in urban context. The main aim of this paper is to develop alternate strategies to overcome the challenges faced in designing as per preferred orientation and then derive a set of tools that can help decide the orientation of a building on site both under normal and congested site conditions. Thereafter, the inferences from the paper can act as references for choosing an optimum orientation for placement of buildings in warm humid climate. It can act as a significant pedagogical guideline for students of architecture in deciphering solutions for a climate responsive design in a simplified manner. The results can also be utilised for future research in formulating similar tools for other climatic regions.