Intended users
The intended users are real estate developers in Lagos, Nigeria, trying to understand the most comfortable yet most economical building forms to build new housing in.
Need you’re trying to provide a solution or support for
Yoruba architecture is a courtyard-based, community-centric building form which was popular in ancient Yoruba empires. While the building form is not a common building practice in southwest Nigeria anymore, I want to explore it’s applicability to urban Lagos, which is bulging with a huge population. I would like to help developers evaluate the “optimal” shape and form for the application of the courtyard structure in urban applications. Specifically considering the number of inhabitable units (function of building area), potential for ventilation and natural lighting (calculated through building perimeter), and building cost (function of both area and perimeter).
Inputs
- Design Variables
- Building thickness, ‘t’
- Number of courtyards
- Evaluators
- Building cost, USD (function of area and perimeter)
- Number of Inhabitable Units (ie, ability to house max # of people)
- % of “comfortable” living area (% of space that has good natural lighting and natural cooling potential)
- Tradeoffs
- In a city like Lagos, the top priority is to sustainably house as many people as possible. Maximizing available living space is #1 priority.
- Natural cooling is a high priority to for many African cities, in light of global warming. It’s been predicted that most African cities will be uninhabitable in the next decade thus exacerbating the need for natural cooling.
- Then, building cost per unit will be considered, as cost is always an important factor.
Outputs
The results will be summarised as:
- Building thickness vs
- Cost per floor
- Number of Inhabitable Units per floor
- % of “comfortable” living area
- Number of inhabitable units per floor vs % of comfortable living floor area
These two graphs will be overlayed