A better social housing for Mexico City:Evaluation of the design and indoor environment of common typologies

Moreno Rangel, Alejandro and Musau, Filbert (2015) A better social housing for Mexico City:Evaluation of the design and indoor environment of common typologies. In: PLEA2015 Architecture in (R)Evolution – Book of Abstracts. PLEA, Bologna. ISBN 9788894116304

Abstract

This paper compares thermal comfort in the most common social housing typologies in Mexico City. It is based on a Base Case plus three different improvement’s group. They are determined by the most common construction methods in Mexico, the Green Mortgage Program (Mexican programme for sustainable social housing), personal recommendations and the Passive House standards proposed for temperate climates. The approach into the building envelops aims to provide a better IEQ and highlight the actual weaknesses. Therefore, this paper only dwells on Thermal comfort: Temperature and Moisture. The typologies taken for this study are Row Housing, Isolated Housing and Vertical Housing; which vary from 42 to 52 square meters per dwelling with different designs, but the same architectural programmes. Results are compared and discussed with the use of graphics and tables on the hottest and coldest day in Mexico City. Discussions of the results are presented in just one of the typologies. However, the analysis of the three typologies on the four Study Cases was made and their results presented in a table. On the analysis of the results can be observed that two Study Cases provide a better IEQ on the three typologies. This suggests that they are the best approaches. Thermal mass and insulation working together prove that it is possible to maintain the thermal comfort range without mechanical supply of heat and/or cooling. The estimated higher cost on the Passive House improvements makes it not accessible for social housing on the Mexican context.