Impact of urban textures on residential building performances in terms of energy and cost efficiency

Rapid urbanization, responsible for considerable global energy consumption, emphasizes sustainability challenges, in particular that of climate change. In order to tackle with climatic and environmental problems, the first step is to achieve energy efficiency in urban textures, are the main source of emissions, the major part of which is due to the energy consumption of buildings. Therefore, this study aims to develop and suggest a model which allows the evaluation of the level of effects of the design parameters which should be considered at the scale of urban textures, on the energy and economic performance of buildings to design sustainable, energy efficient built environments. Energy and economic performances of a reference building modeled in different urban texture alternatives were evaluated. In the first stage, the evaluations regarding energy consumption were performed through DesignBuilder simulation program. In the second stage, for the assessment of economic performance of the alternatives life cycle cost (LCC) analyses were performed integrated to the energy performance analyses. Consequently, the urban texture alternative which achieved the optimum result in terms of energy and cost efficiency was determined for Istanbul representing temperate-humid climatic region where an ongoing mass urban renewal has already been changing the existing urban textures.