A Study On Climate Responsive Strategies Of Residential Buildings In Australia

The famous architect Elkins (Britain) said:"If there is no climate problems, people will no longer rely on the buildings. " Building is used to obtain better internal comfort. The diversity of the traditional architectural forms in different parts of the world reflects the different climatic and environmental characteristics of different parts of the world. Climate discontinuity makes the different countries or regions which are located at different latitudes and longitudes could also have similar climate. China and Australia have similar total land area. There is no big difference between longitude and latitudes. The one obvious difference is that Australia is in the southern hemisphere, while China is in the northern hemisphere. Thus, the climate of Australia’s eastern coast and China’s southeast coast climate are very close. Based on the relationship between architecture and climate, this paper mainly analyzes typical cases of traditional houses in Australia, and explores the specific design strategies of traditional houses in adapting to the climate, so as to provide some suggestion and method for the sustainable development of residential buildings in China.First of all, the paper gives a brief summary of the different climate classification methods and the influence of climate on traditional houses. And then, it analyzes the thoughts and practices of Charles Correa, Hassan Fathy and Ken Yeang, who have made outstanding achievements in exploring the relationship between architecture and climate. After that, on the basis of the theoretical research, the paper analyzes the aboriginal architecture and Colonial period’s architecture in eastern part of Australia along the coast, where there are a lot of residents. The traditional buildings are analyzed through the following aspects, including climatic conditions, layout, space, structure and the material, to explore the similarity and difference and summary traditional buildings’passive climate responsive strategies. Finally, the author analyses Glenn Murcutt’s two projects and two projects that the author worked on, concludes the active and passive climate responsive strategies used in the four projects, summarizes the evolution of the passive strategies and expect the future of the active strategies.