The purpose of this paper is to propose appropriate sustainable design solution for a
suitable housing architectural design that responds towards ecological needs vital for
a comfortable home living environment. This paper is vital as there are many arising
issue relating to middle income housing development involving comfort quality that
need much attention from various parties. Past literature on middle income housing
development in Malaysia focuses on limited areas of study. These are quality of
communal living in settlements; neighbourhood facilities and its effectiveness; crime
prevention through housing design; dwelling support services; policy making on
housing ownership; corporate social responsibility on housing development from
developer’s and buyer’s perspective; efficient housing construction system; waste
management in residential areas; the increment of housing price and related factors
as well as documentation on factors that hinders the implementation of sustainable
technology in middle income housing schemes. None of the above literature discusses
on how to implement ecological approach in home design. This research analyses the
home users’ perception from direct observation and questionnaires on two selected
case studies of middle income housing located in two major cities in Malaysia’s urban
context to establish appropriate ecological home design attributes for future
referencing. Findings indicate there are four key factors that contributed in the
development of ecology housing for the benefit of occupants which are suitable
structure usage, placement of building; proper openings, application of building
fenestration and appropriate landscape. The established referential guideline design is
of benefit for future designers, builders, developer and related authority to build
comfortable homes in the future.
A comfortable work space is important to produce productive work performance among workers. In Malaysia, the condition of office environment and its related issues on thermal comfort are fairly new. Past studies shown that the increment of energy consumption in high rise offices tend to increase dramatically. This is because the consumption of air condition for cooling accounts in office buildings had increased from 40% to 60% in recent years and the total electricity usage for office units also rises intensely due to urban heat island (UHI) resulted from modification of land surfaces. The objective of this paper therefore is to investigate the conditions and problems of existing prominent high rise office in Kuala Lumpur which is IBM Plaza and Menara Mesin Niaga in the scope of thermal comfort as well as describes an integrated passive design approach to reduce the cooling requirement for high-rise office building through an improved building envelope design using green technologies like external wall cladding following the GBI standard. This paper also attempts to get the user perception towards their existing workspace. For this purpose, case study as research strategy is adopted using mixed methodology combining qualitative and quantitative method under the framework of interpretivism and positivism research paradigm. Findings indicate that external wall cladding made of composite aluminium provides much advantages to the user. This study is important because appropriate design principles by adopting appropriate building envelope made of suitable material addressing ecology issues will not only provide a comfortable living environment to the users but also established referential guideline for future designers and scholars whom interested in office design.