What the Cool Buildings Programme provides¶
The five parts of the programme: design strategies, the comfort model, building science resources, prescriptive measures and exemplar buildings.
Key components¶
Design strategies
A simple and flexible 2-Step, 3-zone strategy for designing buildings and planning building-improvement-pathways.
Dynamic adaptive-comfort model
The interactive model acts as technical guidance and helps with target setting for effective thermal performance design and modelling. It is a standardised, humidity-adjusted adaptive comfort model-based tool that provides key humidity-adjusted temperature thresholds for comfortable, healthy and safe conditions in building spaces. It aids investigations of building performance and provides validation of as-built performance to the ARC standard. The standardised thresholds can be adjusted for local conditions as required using localised comfort survey data. We complement this with guidance on simplified, evidence-based temperature limits for spaces within buildings
Building science resources
A library of open-source research papers, and reviews of paywalled papers. Guidance and advice informed by peer reviewed research literature, live environmental condition monitoring of buildings and citizen-science activity and feedback.
Prescriptive measures
Context-informed scenarios to help identify appropriate building fabric and mechanical cooling and ventilation measures, resulting in a growing library of useful architectural features in the form of a ‘pattern book’. This is being co-created with international experts and communities, and shared free of charge with communities.
Exemplar buildings
Showcased buildings, sharing real world insight into their performance and the stories of their designers, builders and occupants.
Source: ARC Technical Criteria - 74
Overview · confidence medium · Imported 2026-09-12, not yet reviewed · next review 2026-12-12
Tags: untagged
Citation key: cool-buildings-programme