Mohsen Aboulnaga

Cities around the world are facing many challenges in terms of population increase, energy consumption, transport, traffic congestion and water supply that result in huge waste, air pollution and colossal emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly CO2. Such huge increase of population would need housing and dwellings to accommodate such increase. Energy efficiency in buildings can result in mitigating energy use. In developing countries, building code compliance is not receiving enough attention from local authorities. The Energy Efficiency Code Compliance Checking (EECCC) is one of the most vital issues in making buildings low carbon, energy efficient and meet green standards, especially amid the urgent actions needed to offset climate change risks and attain sustainable development goals. This paper presents a BIM-based approach for automating compliance checking of the Egyptian code for enhancing energy efficiency in commercial buildings by virtue of visual programming language (VPL). The developed approach is capable to access data and information available in the BIM model during the preconstruction phase to automate the design evaluation complied with the energy code criteria. The VPL approach is flexible enough to modify the created nodes and links to build new or update the existing checking rules and thus facilitates the design checking process performed by designers, architects and urban designers.

Since the early start of universe and creation, man and creatures were enclitic by nature and well organized in harmony. Biomimicry as a concept is the mimicry and imitation of systems and strategies seen in the living world as a foundation for different fields, science and applications such as architectural field. Biomimicry has been applied through three levels, an organism level, behaviour level, and an ecosystem level, in terms of its forms, materials, construction methods, processes, or functions. Biomimicry is a source of innovation, particularly in creating more sustainable and potentially regenerative architecture. The problem is addressed according to the challenges that megacities face today, mainly high energy use, urban air pollution due to transport, large number of inhabitants’ activities, CO2 level and natural resources consumption in all sectors. So, improving cities’ infrastructure, mainly buildings, is one of the major steps needed to enhance livability in cities and mitigate climate change. The objective of this work is to assess the value of adopting biomimicry design concept, as a sustainable tool in architecture, due to its potential to create regenerative built environments. The research strategy is centred on a qualitative strategy and the method of data collection is a narrative and case studies’ types. It is also depends on a deductive approach. In this chapter, architectural examples are examined as a part of nature in order to explore the effect of nature on architecture. In addition, a comparative analysis of biomimicry approach depicting global applications of biomimicry in architecture is presented and discussed in terms of sustainability dimensions. Results of comparing the examined buildings show that the optimum building is CH2 Melbourne City Council House 2 in Australia which has the best sustainability features related to the biomimicry approach and linked to the climate change mitigation and adaptation.