Dominican Republic Research Paper

1.1 Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is located in the sunny Caribbean and part of the northern and western hemisphere. With a total land area of 48,730 km2, Dominican Republic resides on the island of Hispaniola, bordered by Haiti to the West, Atlantic Ocean to the north and East, and the Caribbean Sea to the South.

Michael Grosberg, a writer of the lonelyplanet, describes D. R, as a country blessed with one of the Caribbean’s most diverse landscapes, stunning mountain scenery, desert scrublands, romantic colonial architecture, the friendliest people and plenty of stunning beaches. These natural, historical and social characteristics make tourism rank as the highest revenue earner in its economy, producing earnings of US$4.3 billions

in 2011, as stated by the Central Bank.

Regretfully, architecture in D.R does not take into account its energy performance or the impact on the environment.

As a developing country D.R. is constantly faced with not only economical issues, but also social and environmental. The natural resources, which are the primary source of income via tourism, are being threatened by the way Dominicans are naively and unsustainably designing, building, and living. Over utilizing the already non-efficient power lines, mining the beaches to bring sand in virgin land, contaminating with black water the only resources of fresh water, proudly breaking the established laws, and poorly building over 50% of the entire housing system in the island are some of the repercussions of this uneducated society.

D.R. is classified as one of the ten most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. It is currently being affected by: sea level rise, warmer weather, and flooding. These have lad to being confronted with natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and landslides that are likely to become more frequent and severely impact the fragile economy.

1.2

Theory
The sensitive current state of the environment worldwide requires the implementation of extreme solutions in order to make real, positive impact. Most global issues are related to the climate, and directly affect human’s basic needs such as health, food, water and shelter.
Unless further action is taken to attack GHGE (green house gas emissions) issues, temperatures are projected to rise 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the next few decades. 20% of the world’s biodiversity is projected to be extinct, and rainfall is projected to decrease in hotter parts of the world leading to a significant reduction of water supplies.
Architects are able to address these issues as buildings account for 38% of these emissions , mostly coming from the building’s energy use.

Dominican Republic has the highest priced energy in the region.

The inefficient supply of electricity and ineffective governance of the sector suppresses overall economic growth in the Dominican Republic . It only makes sense that the architect’s designs focus on delivering less energy-dependent buildings.

Although Passive House demands very energy efficient buildings and appears to be one evident architectural solution to the D.R. environmental improvements plan, it has not been studied in this environment yet and represents a high risk. In most locations, there are no qualified workers available to install or maintain them, making it an economic and liability issue.

Vernacular architecture in the Dominican Republic has proven to be energy efficient and provide high thermal comfort levels, but opposite to Passive House it relies on a completely open envelope that allows the air to quickly get in and out of the spaces. Unlike Passive House, Dominican vernacular architecture has no scientific proof rather than user experience, therefore is not scientifically rigorous to hold one over the other.

A thorough analysis is needed, comparing both methods to find which strategies are most effective in this

climate.
Another interesting relationship between these methods is that not only their approach is completely different, but their process to get there was also opposite. Vernacular architecture is and has always been achieved by the trial error method, where the design process is always spasmodic and directly related to tradition, culture and self-reflection.. In contrast, Passive House follows a very strict scientific approach, following rationality, a structured process and comparative analyses. These concepts are both aptly referred as Intuitive-Synthetic Design and Logical-Analytical Design by Roberto Gonzalo.

1.3 Methods
A three-step design/research process will be implemented:
First, two case study buildings (existing Passive House and existing Dominican vernacular) will be modeled and analyzed as is they were in the Dominican Republic (same location, circumstances, size, use, surroundings, users…).
Then the performance of both buildings will be rigorously analyzed with the help of modeling software and their strengths and weaknesses identified.
Finally a third “optimal” building will be designed, merging the strengths of both methodologies and its performance analysis.

The solution will be achieved by utilizing design software like Revit, Green Building Studio and PHPP to identify the weaknesses and strengths of both case study homes when placed under Dominican Republic’s urban and climate conditions. Revit is a Building Information Modeling (BIM) software developed by Autodesk with integrated cloud-based solutions for building performance analysis and visualization. It allows designers to visualize and simulate a buildings performance within its context. Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) it’s a design tool in form of a spreadsheet developed to verify the Passive House Standard in a project, it is based on the international standard ISO 13790 (recognized method to calculate energy use in a building). Its level of accuracy while calculating energy is +/- 0.5kWh as it represents the result of 20 years of research in energy efficiency.

Within these steps, 8 metrics will be utilized to compare the buildings, providing a clear idea of the performance on which aspects to compare in each building:
1. The amount of carbon emitted per year, achieved by calculating the CO2 emissions per year of each building (CO2/year)
2. The building’s total water use, which will be achieved by calculating the buildings yearly water consumption (gal/year).
3. The building’s capacity to take advantage of natural ventilation, which will be achieved by modeling indoor wind paths and speed.
4. The b