Question 1
a) Answer the following questions relating to BIM.
i. What is BIM (Explain the three Ms of BIM)? (3 marks)
ii. Explain the possible benefits of BIM and the three phases of BIM over the
building life cycle. (2 marks)
iii. Which BIM pillar focuses on sustainability? Explain its focus areas? (3 marks)
b) The UK Government has become the first major economy to pass Net Zero Carbon
(NZC) 2050 as law, with all new buildings required to assess embodied and
operational carbon. How would you go about calculating the embodied and
operation carbon impacts of a building? (9 marks)
c) Please describe 4 critical environmental factors of your building design, which can be
simulated through digital tools. (8 marks)
Question 2
a) With the use of a schematic diagram, explain the global ocean conveyor belt and
how this affects the temperature of locations in Western Europe compared with
locations on similar latitudes. (8 marks)
b) You are required to provide natural ventilation to a building at the following site
located at mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere (See Figure 1). The building
needs to be a single-storey building, with a total floor area of 500m2. It can be
located anywhere within the boundary of the site. Focusing on its shape and
orientation, sketch the optimum design for this, and explain the rationale for your
decisions. (10 marks)
Figure 1: Site information for single-storey building
Module Code: ARCH211 Page 3 of 4 Continued
c) After further climatic analysis of the site, it was decided that the building would
benefit from passive solar heat gain in the winter months. Explain, with an
annotated diagram, how you may change the orientation of the building to enhance
solar heat gain, and how natural ventilation through the building can still be kept
after a change in orientation. (7 marks)
Question 3
a) With the use of an equation, define the U-Value of a building component, and state
the units in which it is measured. (10 marks)
b) An external wall consists of two leaves of brickwork, each 102mm thick, with a
50mm cavity which is completely filled with insulation. Using information in Table 1,
calculate the U-Value of this wall. Your answer should include an annotated sketch of
the wall. (10 marks)
Table 1: Thermal properties of materials
Thermal Conductivity
Element Thermal Conductivity (W / m K)
Brickwork 0.7
Cavity Insulation 0.04
Surface Resistances
Surface Thermal Resistance (m2 K / W)
Inside Surface 0.13
Outside Surface 0.04
c) With information in Table 1, it is only possible to estimate of the U-Value of the wall.
Discuss factors that will make the U-Value higher in reality. (5 marks)
Question 4
a) Sketch the sunpath diagram for a site located between the tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn. Briefly explain the shape of this sunpath diagram, and how this relates to
solar positions at key dates such as the solstices and the equinoxes, as well as
sunrise / sunset positions and maximum solar altitude angles. (11 marks)
b) Using an online sun-path diagram (for example:
http://andrewmarsh.com/apps/releases/sunpath2d.html), generate a sun-path
Module Code: ARCH211 Page 4 of 4 End
diagram for Lisbon in Portugal. You should also copy the generated sun-path diagram
in your answers. (2 marks)
c) A fixed horizontal shading device was chosen to provide full shading during the
overheated period (June, July and August) ending in August 31 for a building in
Lisbon, Portugal. Using the generated sun-path in part b, estimate the lowest solar
altitude angle at noon during this period and determine the required depth of the
horizontal shading device (d in the Figure 2).
The height between the windowsill to the lower surface of the shading device (h in
Figure 1) is 1.5m. Please show all steps of your working out. (9 marks)
Figure 2: Section for Required External Shading
d) Apart from a flat horizontal external shading device of length calculated in c. Give
two (2) other shading solution that would also provide the same shading effect,
explaining why these are also effective. (3 marks)