ABSTRACT
Recently, an increased attention is turned to increase the building energy performance in Saudi Arabia in order to improve the global energy saving strategy and to achieve the required indoor thermal comfort. The local environmental microclimate conditions can play an important role in the thermal-energy behaviour of residential buildings. Consequently, the architectural design of the residential buildings in Saudi Arabia can be greatly altered according to the local environmental microclimate conditions in the different regions. The purposed work tries to find out how the residential buildings in Saudi Arabia can be affected by microclimate boundary conditions in different regions. Two different regions have been considered in the present study; namely, Mecca city and AlShifa-Taif region, where intensive changes in microclimate conditions can be observed. Previously, the designed residential building in both regions was not differing in architectural design and exterior requirements. The present work indicates that an essential difference in architectural as well internal and external design of the residential building in such similar regions should be taken into considerations. This can contribute to the strategy of the global energy saving in Saudi Arabia and improve the building energy performance as well.
