Abstract

Urban microclimates are complex phenomenons that are seldom tackled at architecture level since they are falsely thought to belong to the urban realm. However, early decisions in the building morphology can have major impacts on thermal and dynamic comfort of the pedestrians at street level. I will draw a portrait of my early interest in urban microclimates prediction methodologies from a purely thermal comfort perspective leading to our current interdisciplinary research project on Urban Heat Island mitigation in Nordic cities. This project has highlighted the complexity for building professionals to understand the time dependent UHI effect and the lack in effective tools to tackle the interrelated microclimatic dimension in early design stages.