In the last years, building regulation and technical standard concerning energy efficient design and indoor comfort conditions addressed their attention most of all to the thermal characteristics of the envelope and to the energy systems. Other aspects of the design process are often underestimated and delegated to the experience and knowledge of single designers as, for example, the building shape (internal and external), the dimension and the materials of the building elements. In this context, at the Laboratory of Building Design of the University of Trento a research has been carried on whose object is to give useful indication for the design of energy efficient buildings taking into account some specific parameters between which the position of the thermal mass of both the envelope and the inner horizontal partitions (floors), the windows percentage on the south façade, the influence of inner heat gain, of shutters, of night passive ventilation. In particular, a single family house has been designed as prototype building to be studied by means of parametric analysis with dynamic state modelling. The influence of thermal inertia (in particular the superficial thermal capacity and the periodic thermal transmittance) has been analyzed in different configuration considering the users activity in the building (with particular reference to the use of shutters) and the thermal transmittance of the building envelope as invariant. The building presents a rectangular plant given by the sum of simple squared modules, the main axis has a east-west direction and, in the so called ‘base configuration’, the windows surface of the south façade is the 30% of the overall surface. Comparing the hourly trend of indoor air temperature in the base configuration with the ones in the others configurations, the maximum, minimum and average deviation in different hours of the day have been evaluated considering the dynamicity of the envelope and the influence on inner comfort conditions using, during summer period, the adaptive comfort theory. Copyright © 2010IAHS.
