An Evaluation of Climate Responsive Design Features of Buildings on Knust Campus Based on Mahoney Tables

Abstract

The warm and humid climate of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) necessitates that climate responsive buildings are thermally comfortable when laid down design principles are followed in the planning and construction of dwellings. An example of a climatic design guide leading to decision support principles toward the design of buildings is the Mahoney Tables. In this paper, the evaluation of buildings of two colleges which are characterized by old and new constructions is studied. The main aim is to find out which building type (old or new) were constructed based on climatic design principles. The evaluated results based on the Mahoney Tables showed that older buildings (95%) conformed to climatic design principles whilst some recently built structures (40%) were deficient in various aspects of sustainable design principles such as orientation. The study provides a direction and caution designers to use climatic responsive design principles in the planning and construction of buildings.