Investigating the Effect of High-Rise Buildings’ Mass Geometry on Energy Efficiency within the Climatic Variation of Egypt

Energy conservation is recently the most important issue all over the world, including in Egypt. Recently, the built environment of Egypt has experienced a dramatic change in its buildings’ typology, with more interest in constructing high-rise buildings. This in turn creates high demand for energy, as high-rise buildings are considered to be one of the most energy-consuming types of buildings. Egypt has a wide variety in its climatic conditions, with seven different inhabited climatic regions, and a further one which is uninhabited. Therefore, integrating the energy efficiency of a building as a major design factor in the early design stages of such a type of buildings is important. This article is concerned with investigating the effect of high-rise buildings’ geometrical shape on the building’s energy consumption within the different climatic regions of Egypt. Four building shapes (square, circular, rectangular, and ellipse) are examined. The long axe of the models is oriented to the north (“the optimum orientation within all regions”), with a window-to-wall ratio (WWR) of 30%. The performance of these models is studied in seven cities representing the inhabited Egyptian climatic regions using simulation software, DesignBuilder, with the EnergyPlus simulation tool. Study findings revealed that adjusting the geometric form of the building significantly affects energy consumption and thermal comfort with climatic variation. The most compact shape, circular, was the most suitable geometrical shape in four regions out of seven. The ellipse shape was found to be the most suitable mass geometry within two other regions, while the square shape was found to be effective in only one region. The results of this research indicate that designers should not use the rectangular shape anywhere across Egypt.