This thesis describes the development of early learning spaces which teach sustainable practices to children in a method that can be applied at a global level. Sustainability, for the purpose of this research, is defined as the idea of living throughout a lifetime with the conscious and unconscious understanding that natural resources are not unlimited and need to be respected and conserved through personal effort. Through a detailed analysis of both early childhood education methods and innovative sustainable design practices, a specific design matrix was created based on current standards set by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for New Construction v.2.2 © by USGBC, and from this matrix and casestudy analysis, 19 learning components were established. From research on two teaching methods, the Reggio Emilia and the Montessori teaching styles, it has been established that the environment surrounding the children acts as a pedagogical tool by engaging natural curiosity and demonstrating natural behavioral limits. Through the analysis of early childhood education methods, a learning paradigm outlining five key ways in which design relates to the way young children learn has been developed. Young children learn through five basic methods; tactile learning, spatial relationship awareness, connectivity of the child with others and the physical world, freedom of exploration, and the conceptualization of human comfort. Innovative sustainable design practices identified in this research include passive and active energy and water conservation, utilizing alternative energy resources, and incorporating recycled and non-toxic materials into the design components. Specific aspects of sustainability were chosen because they are easily adaptable into the lives and learning strategies of young children. By incorporating these strategies into a child’s daily life by exposing the function of sustainable techniques, the space creates a passive education approach. The learning paradigm developed from early education research is applied to current sustainable strategies, using LEED™ as an organization tool. The matrix was designed to show a clear connection between the way children learn and specific sustainable strategies. By relating each applicable credit to ways in which children learn, a set of guidelines has been established for incorporating energy efficiency and sustainability into a child’s life experiences. Four casestudies were chosen which demonstrate that educational spaces are convincing arenas for the process of integrating sustainable design features into the daily lives of children. Van Eyck’s Orphanage emphasizes the use of materiality and the idea of scale in spaces designed for children. The Argonne Child Development Center focuses on sustainable features of energy consumption and healthy resource utilization. Davidson Elementary School includes similar features but adds emphasis to the mutual relationship among school, immediate physical environment and the larger community. The Civano Community School utilizes sustainable strategies to teach children about environmental issues and awareness. From the sustainable learning matrix, and from analysis of case studies, which utilize key learning techniques and sustainable strategies, final design components have been developed and classified into easy to understand diagrams. The intent of these component diagrams was to provide a reference guide for future early childhood education design projects. The purpose of this research was to develop key spatial components for specific sustainable education spaces based on common ways young children learn and universal ideas of sustainability, which can be altered using site and climate specific techniques to be integrated into communities on a global scale. This document is meant as a guideline for other designers to use when considering the development of spaces to teach young children about energy efficiency and sustainability. The 19 key spatial components established in this document combine the ideas behind early childhood learning methods with multiple sustainable strategies, to provide learning spaces which bring sustainability to a level that children can understand. By encouraging sustainable choices and awareness at a young age, children will grow up with the understanding that it is their responsibility to preserve the environment and positively influence our future.

As international attention tilts towards increasingly global warming, the need for alternative and renewable forms of energy become more crucial. There has been an exponential growth in population globally with the state of Arizona being no exception to the trend. With such high population growth, also emerges higher energy demands and consumption leading to sever environmental pollution. This thesis seeks to demonstrate the urgent need for adoption and support towards solar energy in these changing times. Critics of Solar energy have often cited its high cost as a barrier, however overlooking historic support afforded and extended to traditional forms of energy. It is hypothesized in this thesis that an end to solar energy subsidies would cause solar panel system deployment to fail financially for the time being. To test this theory, a Base Case of a commercial office space in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is selected as part of a larger NPS grant to HED Laboratory at UA. It is showcased through the means of the base case energy modelling and financial analysis that the stated hypothesis is proven true. To remedy it, passive strategies and techniques are suggested and implemented in a modified case study. Financial results show 27.5 years of payback for the base case in the absence of tax credits while tax credits enable it to be reduced to 16.7 years. Given a traditional panel warranted lifetime of 20 years, the former case proves to be financially a failure. Alternatively, the modified case study outputs a 17.9 years life time, even without the presence of tax credit, thereby enabling financial success.

This thesis demonstrates achieving a net-zero energy commercial building in the hot, arid region of Saudi Arabia. The development process uses three main concepts: evaluating and assessing selected existing commercial buildings, incorporating energy efficiency strategies, and implementing renewable energy source technologies. This study has been divided into five chapters: Introduction and Problem Statement, The Net-Zero Approach, Background of Saudi Arabia and Its Climatic Variations, Case Studies, and Project Development and Demonstration. Initially, an assessment of the Umm Al-Qura University administration building was conducted in two steps: 1) collecting building data and creating a building simulation in eQUEST software to obtain accurate performance prediction results and 2) implementing energy efficient strategies for both passive and active systems to mitigate energy use in commercial buildings located in hot, arid climates. Finally, embracing renewable energy sources through adopting Photovoltaic (PV) Panels will meet remaining energy needs after energy efficiency strategies have been applied. To summarize, the main focus is on designing energy efficiency strategies rather than focusing on technologies. After conducting this research, the following results were achieved in the simulation and calculation: 1. The energy savings were beyond expectation at 150,036 kWh in remaining energy. 2. A utility bill savings of more than half the cost of building operations. 3. The simple payback on the entire solar panel system for the proposed design will be approximately 3.3 years.

Increase in urbanization and industrialization around the world in recent years has led to a consequent rise in energy demand. In recent years it has been reported that approximately 75% of generated power is consumed in cities. It also worth to mention that about 50% energy consumption in U.S is in building sector which 41.7% is for operating buildings. With the global energy demand in 2040 being expected to be about 30% higher than that of 2010. For this reasons, an urgent need for the incorporation of alternative energy as well as energy efficiency measures has to be incorporated in urban planning and construction. Until now, two main approaches that have been integrated into large scale wind energy in urban settings are either locating wind energy farm in the periphery of the urban areas or integration of wind energy systems into the building design. It was observed that the installation of wind turbines in order to meet 10–15% of global energy demand might cause surface warming by increasing the temperature by 1 °C on land. Moreover, there some issues that can be considered as a disadvantage for large wind turbines. For Instance: noise production, the social aesthetic acceptability, negative impact on birds, the cost of maintenance, transportation, sufficient infrastructure and etc. In contrast to large-scale wind turbines, small wind turbines are much simpler and exploitation of building. In high-rise buildings, the heights and onsite energy generation imply an absence of big towers required to capture high wind speeds and minimum transmission losses, as well as a contribution to the configuration of zero-energy buildings. On the other hand, to improve safety and serviceability of super-tall buildings in strong winds, aerodynamic optimization of building shapes is considered to be the most efficient approach. Aerodynamic optimization is aimed at increasing the structural resistance against winds. The idea of generating wind power in high rise buildings is experienced in some constructions that the further study reveals the cons and pros about them. The Pearl River Tower, which is one of the latest and successful building in this type, considered as the case study for this research. The research proposing the distributed opening as an effective modification to improve the aerodynamic behavior of the high rise buildings and devising the micro-turbine within the penetration for wind energy generating. The CFD simulation shows the improvement in coefficient drag factor in the proposal design option and the wind tunnel test reveals better aerodynamic performance as well. The conclusion shows better performance for wind harvesting and wind energy generating beside reducing the structural weight that would be needed in comparison to the original building. On the other hand, the proposal design shows more lift forces on the building and the other challenging issue would be maintenance the higher number of the small turbine. The further study will be needed to controlling the vibration and noise level inside the wind ducts and optimizing the wind penetration pattern on the building façade.

Investigation and research into the Persian Gardens, leading this project into a step that these World Heritage Sites might have been known as sustainable construction, but the fact that water scarcity of their region is a serious threaten for all these amazing Gardens. Thus, enhancing and improving these gardens by merging, adding and adapting todays technologies can make them considered as constructions with water and energy conservation design. Based on nowadays world environment concerns, recognizing renewable and non-renewable sources of energies in a region or site can cause a miracle. Since, almost all Persian Gardens located in regions with arid and semi-arid climate, water poverty as a biggest issue and nonrenewable energy should be included as a problematic concern. There are many available active and passive strategies that can be applied in these heritage sites which decrease water consumption either directly or indirectly. Such as water harvesting, greywater reuse, photovoltaic panels and material changes. Water known as a vital element of each garden for irrigation purposes, but in Persian Garden water is more than a functional element. Thus, finding a way to provide and recycle water beside the underground sources is necessary. Subterranean, springs and wells are resources of water for Persian gardens which renew so slowly or non-renew these days. Being so close to a city with considerable population lunches and idea of using greywater for irrigation in these gardens. In this research, the doable options for energy conservation design for these sites will be discussed, then comparing some case studies in all over world where greywater reusing water system for irrigation is happening will be next step. In conclusion, greywater reusing system in urban scale in order to irrigate a filed or garden will be investigate on a Shazdeh Garden as a main case study of this research.

As the rest of the world under development catches up economically with the developed nations, adoption of western tastes is projected to lead to enormous increases in energy use. Specifically, air conditioning use within countries with low saturation rates and high cooling degree rates (India and China) have a potential demand of up to 5 times that of the U.S. market. This growth in HVAC (Heating Ventilation&Air Conditioning) means billions of tons of increased carbon dioxide emissions and trillions of dollars in investment in electricity generation and transmission infrastructure.If there is adoption of Earth sheltering and integration design within these geographical areas, then it might be possible to mitigate the need for such high increase in electricity demand.Ultimately, an estimate of how much quantifiable impact wide adoption of earth integration can have in the regions in question needs to be calculated and compared to projected energy demand if things continue as they are. To do so, parameters need to be determined to see how much of the future air conditioning demand can be met through thermal mass/earth integration. That is, how much future energy demand can be avoided through earth sheltering? To do so:1-Determine what areas account for the greatest projected demand in future air conditioning use.2-See how much of the projected demand can be met through Thermal Mass and Earth Integration (T.M./E.I.) within these areas.3-A design/energy modeling exercise showing proper use and implementation of Earth sheltering within our local climate will be carried out to prove effectiveness of varied strategic thermal mass applications.4-Compare the relative savings of different levels of Earth Integration to arrive at an average overall savings if universal adoption takes place.Top-down approach to energy savings (HVAC efficiency) is not enough to offset projected adoption and its impact on the local and global environments. Energy efficient design is necessary to deal with as much of the increase in projected demand as possible. The use of earth as a building material can be a powerful tool in the fight against increasing energy demands and accompanied destructive environmental effects and needs greater consideration and adoption.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate and assess the residential buildings energy consumption in the east cost of the Arabian Gulf region. After, conducting the energy performance assessment, the main goal is to reduce the energy consumption of those homes to reach the net-zero stage. Moreover, a net-zero strategies tree have been created. The tree has so many elements in order to help designing the Net-Zero prototype which going to reach the Net-Zero stage see fig.1: the strategies are :- renewable energy, passive technique and enhancing building quality. Furthermore, at the beginning of the research, a study was made for the Arabian Gulf vernacular architecture in order to help designing the net-zero prototype and learn some construction lessons from them since individuals were living in a net-zero homes at the time (no electricity).

People's experience of space is quite different because we experience our environment with all senses available to us. Environmental pollutions can affect everybody's experiences of space. Noise is one of the environmental pollutions that long-term exposure to high noise levels can cause sleep disruption, reduction of performance, permanent hearing loss, and the inability to enjoy the space. This research presents an assessment of noise levels on the main campus of the University of Arizona, based on noise measurements and noise maps, and defines problems associated with the high noise levels in specific areas. Then, strategically develops an acoustic panel, by using an environmentally friendly material which is called Polylactic Acid. PLA is a kind of biopolymers and it is biodegradable material made from renewable raw materials like corn starch. In addition, the University of Arizona's campus is surrounded by four streets with intense vehicle traffic, which contribute to causing the noise level to exceed the legal limits established for some of the educational areas. There are many methods for mitigating noise in urban areas, including the formation of the city, the geometry of buildings, vegetation, and sidewalk design, building façade design and using acoustic materials. All these responses for noise mitigation should be considered as environmentally friendly design concepts. The manufacturing of many materials can cause severe environmental pollutions, but by using Polylactic acid material we will save our planet.