THERMAL COMFORT CONDITIONS IN OASIS CITIES OF HOT DRY CLIMATES. An assessment for the city of Mendoza, Argentina.

CORREA, ERICA N.; RUIZ, M. ANGÉLICA; CANTÓN, M. ALICIA

Louvain-la-Neuve

Conferencia; PLEA 2011-The 27th Conference on Passive and Low Energy Architecture; 2011

PLEA-Universitaires de Louvain

This research is the first to assess the influence of different tree morphologies in road channels of Mendoza Metropolitan Area (MMA) in Argentina. The assessment of the thermal comfort in oasis cities of hot dry climates like MMA is crucial for a bioclimatic urban design that includes the contributions made by green structures. This paper evaluates outdoor thermal comfort in nine cases by applying the COMFA (Comfort Formula) method. It measures the behaviour of low building density in conjunction with the widths of the road channels (30 m, 20 m and 16 m) and the Platanus Acerifolia, Morus Alba and Fraxinus Excelsior tree species. The final goal was to know the combinations that achieve the better thermal behaviour that also minimizes both energy consumption and pollution. New discussions about how the form of a city influences its sustainability have in turn promoted that planners and experts seek that human settlements start to function more sustainably. This research goes in this direction too, as it has explored a low and high building density frame to propose the best configuration that improves thermal comfort in road channels as well as cooling in an oasis city of dry land in Argentina.