Outdoor Comfort

Architects and clients hold a great responsibility for making the living conditions better. Every time a new building is placed, it has an impact on the surrounding environment. This is very important to be aware of in early phase while there still is time to change design. A good wind performance must be embedded into the design early to avoid unforeseen expenses due to bad wind conditions and e.g. the main entrance is unsafe or the dining garden feels cold.

We offer an integrated outdoor comfort service, because we believe that well designed outdoor spaces are essential for the usability of the outdoor spaces in our cities, a healthy lifestyle and space for better living.

Our sustainability experts perform outdoor comfort simulations worldwide with a special emphasis on the unique condition in Scandinavia.  We focus on all phases of a project – from the first design proposals to the documentation of pedestrian comfort conditions in relation to the approval of a building project.

Pedestrian Wind Comfort and Outdoor Thermal Comfort

Early phase analysis

Pedestrian Wind Comfort
Wind comfort, and the criterion used to evaluate this perception, is based upon numerical concepts to capture how people feel in differing wind conditions, at varying activity levels. To test and determine the level of pedestrian wind comfort in an urban area, the local wind speed is related to the weather station data.  We use quick-and-dirty machine learning predictions for live results during our design workshops and we validate with industry standard cloud based solutions.

Outdoor Thermal Comfort
Introducing the Universal Thermal Comfort Index. In year 2000 a new scale of "experienced temperature" was introduced by a team of researchers, named the Universal Temperature Climate Index (UTCI). It is a metric that combines clothing, activity level, humidity, wind speed, air temperature and radiant temperature. This helps us setting a design strategy for making the area as comfortable as possible.

Documentation

Documentation (later phases)
Whether it is documentation for local authorities, DGNB certifications or other, we deliver the requested documentation. Typically, the documentation for wind comfort is typically an annual comfort map such as Lawson, NEN8100 or Davenport. Common for those three schemes is that they all map out on a city plan showing where it is comfortable to have cafés, transit and other activities etc.

Bespoke solutions

Looking for something else? We offer bespoke solutions for your project

• Pedestrian wind safety

• Natural ventilation (pressure measured on the facades and then simulated inside in the room)

• Thermal buoyancy for atrium buildings

• Wind pressure on facades for structural

• Snow/dust accumulation

• Pollution dispersion (does my air intake come from the nearby highway?)

• Annual UTCI (thermally comfortable for xx % of a season or annually)