Effect of building forms on energy consumption in coastal rural communities in Egypt

Current attention on rural regions electrification has highlighted the significance of linking its development with useful usages for energy. It is argued that it is essential to promote the pace of rural electrification and decrease its concentration on a relatively small number of developing countries. Notwithstanding this emphasis, improvement in electrifying remote rural areas has been slow. In this context, recent global research pays recognisable attention to the implementation of approaches that promote sustainable design in the built environment and ensure energy efficiency. In this regard, housing building forms is considered an important parameter which significantly affects the energy consumption for residential neighbourhoods. Therefore, this research paper endeavours to investigate the influence of housing building forms on energy efficiency, taking into account the hot climatic conditions in one of the urban regeneration projects in Egypt. To accomplish the research aim, a comparative analysis is performed using parametric numerical analysis — DesignBuilder energy analysis — to compare different parametric hypothetical proposals of various building configurations. Due to the difference in unit floor areas and building ratio, energy use intensity (EUI) is used as the comparative factor between the alternatives. The study identifies that energy efficiency in buildings is greatly dependent on their forms, which would help designers and urban planners to suggest the best energy performance of housing building forms at the conceptual design phase. This also has implications for other environmental, social and economic urban planning issues.