UC Berkeley

Housing development in the 21st century is impacted by two major challenges: the environmental impact of buildings, and a global housing crisis. In many parts of the world, unprecedented demand for new housing stock has led to construction of large numbers of standardized units that fail to perform well in energy efficiency and thermal comfort. To address both energy and cli- mate challenges, housing solutions must be efficient, but also adaptable, scala- ble and centered on comfort. We present a methodology for design of climate- responsive housing at a national scale, using Mexico as a case study. Combin- ing climate zone clustering, energy simulation, and thermal comfort evalua- tions, our framework revealed climate-responsive designs that provide an aver- age 55% increase in yearly comfort hours, and energy savings of 2,127 kWh/year compared to the base-construction. These findings demonstrate that standardized units can be significantly improved (both in terms of occupant comfort and energy efficiency), offering scalable pathways towards more sus- tainable housing worldwide. Future work will expand this framework to inte- grate energy and construction costs, life-cycle assessment, and retrofit consider- ations to further support large-scale implementation of climate-responsive hous- ing design.