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A major challenge for the Indian government is the rapid growth of the urban population, leading to housing shortages and poor urban living conditions. The current need-based housing shortage in the country is about 19 million units as per the 2011 census. The government has introduced many affordable housing schemes that focus on meeting the shortage of housing needs. Excess cost management needs to be planned from the initial stages of design during the building's project life. Value engineering is an effective problem-solving approach that minimizes prices while preserving and improving performance and quality requirements. Ve process's success lies in its ability to find ways to reduce redundant expenses while maintaining efficiency, reliability, performance, and other critical elements that reach or surpass the standards of the client. This study aims at understanding the application of value engineering in affordable housing to optimize cost, time and quality thus increasing overall value of the project. Two case studies of different scale of housing projects are considered, it has been found out that on replacing a material with similar functions, helps reduce the cost of the project and add to the value of the project. This research will provide an overview of benefits of strong value engineering and use of alternative materials to enhance the efficiency of a project.

Background and objectives: Thermal comfort is very essential for a comfortable stay in any indoor space. Comfort conditions of indoor spaces are influenced by parameters like air movement, humidity, air temperature, etc. The aim of this research is to assess the air movement preferences by the occupants in classrooms of the selected higher education institutes in hot humid climate of India. Methods/statistical analysis: Surveys were conducted in all the three seasons of the year as per ASHRAE standard procedures. Environmental variables were measured in classrooms while questionnaires were distributed to the occupants simultaneously. A total of 361 students were surveyed with 1444 data sets for the whole year. Findings: Outdoor (Tout) temperatures were recorded and regression analysis has been done to find the relationship between the mean outdoor temperatures with the indoor operative temperatures (Top) recorded. The acceptance of air movement in classrooms during summer is 10–15.4%, in moderate season it is 5.6–30% and during winter it is up to 58%. Improvements/application: This study enables to understand the influence of air movement preference on occupant’s thermal comfort in classrooms of hot and humid climate of India. This will help in creating a comfortable environment in classrooms of higher education through placement and designing of openings for increased air movement thereby improving the thermal comfort conditions. This research assessed the movement of air in the classrooms of higher education and the occupants air movement preference for thermal comfort. This study is a starting point for the adaptive thermal comfort research in hot and humid climate of Vijayawada region. Keywords: Thermal Comfort, Air Movement Preference, Naturally Ventilated Classrooms, Environmental Factors

The term “built environment” refers to the human made or modified physical surroundings in which people live, work and play. These places and spaces include our homes, communities, schools, workplaces, parks/recreations areas, business areas and transportation systems, and vary in size from large-scale urban areas to smaller rural developments. Based on human activities, the environment was created to obtain the basic needs of people. The regular human activities for many generations to prepare their needs are considered as culture. Hence based on culture, the environment was built and maintained for future generation. Regions are separated into two types based on production occurs in rural area and trading developed in urban. In olden days, most of the places are rural because of the undevelopment in transport system. The activities involved in preparing food, shelter and other needs are the common factors to build rural environment. Natural resources are the basic factor that decides the build environment and culture of human in rural regions. By analyzing the natural resources, the cultural impacts are determined based on building environment in rural areas

Urbanization is a worldwide phenomenon. Globally, there is a constant increase in urbanization across various cities. Cities' urban spaces, in terms of open, built-up, and green space, are changing as a result of this rapid development. Creating or redefining an urban environment necessitates careful planning and guidelines, as well as a user-friendly approach to design. The visual aesthetics of a space are prioritized over all other dynamics and considerations required to complete a proper urban setting. Roads and built-up spaces are key components of an urban setting. The sound propagation in between these spaces decides the livability of people. In most of the urban citiesacross the world, the increasing noise level in the communities put forth a major issue for its people and their livability. Redesigning the spaces with alternate strategy to create a better acoustical urbanenvironment is important. One such strategy is soundscape and it uses environmental sound to redefine an urban space. A soundscape approach to the design will bring out a positive and stress free surrounding.This paper aims to study and understand urban sound and the implementations of soundscape design in urban environment through case studies. Also intends to examine the existing case of the Ring Road Junction in Vijayawada and propose a soundscape strategy that can be implemented to create a less noisy junction. The paper concludes by proposing a strategy for designing an urban soundscape.

Hundreds of years of experience, self-learning and traditional wisdom has led to the development ofcontextual based traditional architecture. Vernacular style of architecture developed using locally availablematerial, so as to achieve the better living conditions which suits to the context. Use of local traditionaldesign and construction techniques had eventually helped in building of social and cultural background invarious regions of the country. Sensitivity in design as per the specific microclimatic aspects has beenpracticed since ages in the country. The main objective of this paper is to understand the design principlesand strategies followed by the vernacular style of architecture which are energy efficient and climateresponsive. Design principles such as form, proportion, spatial design aspects, construction materials etc..,have been documented and analyzed for a specific case example of an existing traditional building in Pipparavillage of West-Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India. Besides thermal performance, lighting analysishave been performed through IES-VE Analysis. This paper also sheds light on the transformation ofcourtyard spatial configuration as per the changing needs of users; this investigation is an attempt todemonstrate the adoption of good practices in transformation of traditional spatial design aspects of thedwelling. Simulation results has shown that the current case study has improved thermal performance upto30% after the courtyard transformation, whereas natural lighting levels has drastically reduced upto 79%within the indoor sapces.

There are array of evidences to suggest that changes in climate are taking place globally with varying degrees of impacts. Climate change triggered by global warming is expected to have widespread consequences and subsequent usage and overloading of conventional energy resources. These effects will have major impacts on ecosystems, health, water resources and key economic sectors. Most of the vernacular building design considerations have a window and a small opening at ventilator level / beneath the ceiling at opposite wall to create natural ventilation to the building envelop through thermal buoyancy effect. Natural ventilation by thermal buoyancy in a building with a window and a small opening at ventilator level and periodic solar thermal model have been integrated to investigate the thermal behaviour of a non-air conditioned building. The Solar thermal model has been considered to analyse the indoor air temperature swings for heating and cooling periods with due considerations to the building components such as walls/roof, periodic solar radiation, isothermal mass, openings (window and door opening), ACHs and ambient air temperatures. The vernacular concept has been studied through solar thermal model to elaborate the influence openings on indoor air temperature swings and to consider its importance in designing of the non-air conditioned buildings for conservation of energy at micro level and to save a large amount of energy at settlement level as the over-all temperature in the room is a sensitive function of the size of the openings i.e. windows and ventilators / slits.

A numerical model to predict energy conservation potential of earth-air heat exchanger system and passive thermal performance of building has been developed. This model improves upon previous studies by incorporating effects of ground temperature gradient, surface conditions, moisture content and various design aspects of earth-air-tunnel heat exchanger (EATHE). The model is based on simultaneously coupled heat and mass transfer in the EATHE and is developed within the scope of numerical techniques of finite difference techniques and FFT (Matlab). The model is validated against experimental data of a similar tunnel in Mathura (India), and is then used to predict the tube-extracted temperature for various parameters such as humidity variations of circulating air, airflow rate and ambient air temperature. The model is found to be more accurate in predicting tube extracted temperature variations along the length (error range ±1.6%). The earth-air-tunnel is further coupled to a non-air-conditioned building to study reduction in cooling and heating loads. The cooling potential of an 8m earth tunnel is found adequate (19KW) to maintain an average room temperature 27.65°C. However, an auxiliary energy load of 1.5KW for the winter season is required to achieve comfort conditions with an EATHE system affecting an average room temperature of 24.48°C. The present model can be easily coupled to different greenhouse and building simulation codes.