The passive house standards suggest that the thermal envelope of a structure should be designed as a continuous and uniform insulation layer, surrounding the whole building – implemented also under its foundation. However, the inserting of soft insulation layers under the foundation of a building increases its period of vibration, since the structure’s oscillations on a soft layer are slower than on a hard one. The paper analyses the seismic behaviour of buildings with different plan layouts, weights and founded on diffrent soil types and different insulation layers. The result of simplified seismic analyses indicate that the compressive strength of XPS insualtion layer might be exceeded already for buildings with more than two stories.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2657156
This paper explores and discusses the possible relations between the architecture and seismic resistance of buildings. The first part of the paper stresses the practical importance of earthquake resistance in every building built in earthquake prone areas. Further on it is shown that the earthquake resistance in architectural expression can be dealt in hidden or concealed principles or on the other hand in revealed or emphasized ways. The paper hypothesize that the architectural design, which to a certain level reflects an earthquake threat, might provide a better designs with stronger architectural identity for buildings in earthquake-prone areas. In this context it summarizes the term “earthquake architecture”, which is defined as particular approach to design of buildings in architecture in a way which draws the inspiration from earthquake engineering. Such an approach might be one of the best responses of the architects (in cooperation with structural engineers and earthquake specialists) to the earthquake threats. In the second part of the paper the proposed method for recognition and evaluation of architecture in the context of earthquake resistance is presented. Using this evaluation method, it is possible to classify buildings at several different levels of “earthquake architecture”. Case study of three comparable competition projects is presented as example of using this method to evaluate the architectural design in the context of seismic resistance, and at the same time, to indicate the ways in which architecture can play its role part within earthquake resistant design.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2702980
Passive house is an optimal energy efficient house. The annual heating demand is 15 kWh/(m2a), more the 10-times less than in usual house. The additional building costs are minimal. A passive house needs for a successful realization a good thermal insulated building envelope, without thermal bridges and with a proper airtightness. The new technologies are available in Slovenia, too. About 100 passive houses were built in Slovenia last three years. The paper analyses the crucial parameters for design of energy efficient buildings and characteristics of new buildings.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2657412