Sustainable house design: Fernando de Noronha‐Brazil

This paper describes the methodology and the environmental assessment results of the proposed sustainable house in Fernando de Noronha island (038 51^′ south and 328 25^′ west), at the Northeast Coast of Brazil. The project was developed at the same site of the EMBRATEL telecommunications station built in 1997 and aimed to serve as a sustainable demonstration project at the island with minimum impact on the surroundings. Characterized by a warm‐humid tropical climate, overheating is the major problem all year round. Conservation of resources, such as water, energy and materials are the main concerns for architectural design projects to be implemented at this island context. This project concentrated on a design that could minimize energy requirements, through improvement of thermal comfort and low energy features, so the daytime electrical needs could be accomplished by the photovoltaic component (grid connected system). The evaluation of performance and feasibility of solutions were tested on a range of different simulation tools, such as VisualDOE‐2.1 (LBL, USA), Esp‐r (ESRU, UK), Ecotect (UWA, Australia) and PV Design PRO 4.0. (Sandia Labs‐USA). This project was a finalist at the WREA/UNESCO, World Renewable Energy 2000 environmental design competition.