Season’s Greetings from MIT Portugal Program

Season's greetings from MIT Portugal Program with wishes of prosperity throughout the coming year.

Our e-card was designed by Mariana Pereira, MIT Portugal Program PhD student.Mariana is developing her thesis on Sustainable Energy Systems at FEUP (Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto), supervised by Professor Eduardo Oliveira Fernandes. Her work concerns the study of Urban Sustainability, Morphology and Energy in Architecture. Learn more about this project through Mariana own words:

“Buildings are among the most ‘energivorous’ economic sectors. The built environment represents an energy problem but can also be part of the solution for the reduction of the CO2 emissions. Climates such as the one in Portugal offer enormous opportunities to reduce significantly the commercial energy needs for thermal comfort and others.

One of the main motivations behind the thesis is the fact that, in general, the principles of the Buildings Physics are only used in a qualitative way in the widespread Architecture practice in Portugal. In this sense, the use of design guidelines is an opportunity to score the Architecture design with stricter lines through quantification. 

The expected outcome is the development of a methodology based on an order of merit with the parameters that influence the thermal behavior towards low energy, comfortable and healthy residential buildings for Portugal. This roadmap will be based on graphical tools for easy application by architects not familiar with Physics and Thermal concepts and principles.”