The design of buildings in arid climate for sustainability and energy saving. A global approach – The case study of Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC) oversees the planning and construction of buildings characterized by lower energy and water consumption, through the Master Plan called to govern the impressive residential development planned by 2030. The UPC has develop and promoted the use of the protocol Estidama in the form of guidelines useful for the construction of sustainable buildings, as is already the case with protocols such widespread and LEEDS and GBC. A recent international competition, aimed to urbanize, with single-family residential houses, an area close to the airport, has proposed a Baseline Villa to be energetically improved with two different architectural solutions (Traditional and Contemporary Villa). The paper, from analysis of Estidama protocol, presents tools, methods and results of the projects that was presented for the participation in the competition, with the aim to have the maximum thermal, energy and daylighting performances assessed with dedicated software.