Daylight and natural ventilation analysis for residential buildings in two different climates; Cairo and Turin

Daylight and natural ventilation are the most important two factors to provide inner comfort, it doesn’t only affect the inner comfort but also the energy consumption. There is a rapid growth in the population in Cairo since 1950 as it was 2.5 million and in 2022 Cairo reached 21.8 million, while Turin during 1950 was 1 million and in 2022 the population is 1.8 million. The heigh population in Cairo affects the energy consumption, especially that the residential sector consumes a large portion of electrical energy generated in Egypt, also most of the energy consumed in Cairo is on the light and air conditioners, which can be solved with daylight and natural ventilation planning. Cairo and Turin have different climate conditions. The variation in temperature between Cairo and Turin is due to the fact that they lie in different latitude and longitude. Egypt lies in the hot dry climate zone, part of Sahara Desert in north Africa. Turin is Located in north west Italy, it features a humid subtropical climate, due to its hot summers as does most of Northern Italy, Winters are moderately cold and dry, summers are mild in the hills and quite hot in the plains. A complex of 148 residential buildings, lies on 0.133 Km² varying from town house to twin house to stand-alone villa which is in the construction stage in Cairo, Egypt was used as the case study. The same case study was used in different climate condition in Turin to understand how the climate will affect the inner comfort, In Turin the complex was built with 40 cm wall thickness and double glass, with respect to Italian building regulations as SHGC, TVIs, U-value. There are two proposed cases one in Cairo and the other one in Turin, In the case of Turin a 55 cm wall glass was used to decrease the U-value of glass to comply with the new Italian requirements, and low emissive type of glass was selected instead of selective glass, but the thicker wall gives small inner area and less daylight. The case is then modified after studying the building regulations in Egypt and Italy and compare between them to understand more how to improve the building functionality. In Cairo a proposed case with horizontal and vertical shading device in the south façade and a vertical shading device on the east and west façade, and different glass type with higher thermal transmittance to offer more open blinds hours, as the main concept of the complex is to provide more of the view of the pyramids, with the old case in Cairo the blinds was closed more hours which provide less view of the pyramids.