PASSIVE COOLING STRATEGIES IN INSTITUTIONAL BUILDINGS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THERMAL COMFORT PERFORMANCE AND ENERGY REDUCTION POTENTIAL 60 25
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.83374/jesber.vol1no2.110Keywords:
passive cooling, institutional buildings, thermal comfort, energy efficiency, natural ventilation, solar shading, adaptive comfort, systematic reviewAbstract
Institutional buildings such as schools, universities and public facilities often depend on mechanical cooling despite constrained energy budgets. This review examined how passive cooling strategies can reduce cooling demand while maintaining acceptable indoor conditions. Searches conducted between April and May 2026 used ScienceDirect, Wiley Online Library, SpringerLink, Taylor & Francis Online and Google Scholar, supplemented by backward and forward citation tracking. Twenty-five publications were retained for qualitative evidence mapping. Because the corpus contained both primary empirical studies and secondary reviews or conceptual sources, the revised synthesis separates these evidence types: primary empirical studies inform direct outcome synthesis, while secondary sources provide taxonomy, context and interpretation. The clearest directly traceable energy result in the primary institutional evidence was an 18–33% annual primary-energy saving from natural ventilation in Spanish school buildings. Adaptive-comfort evidence also indicates that occupants of naturally ventilated educational buildings may accept conditions around 1–2°C beyond static-model expectations, although the magnitude varies by climate, method and building operation. The literature remains geographically uneven and methodologically heterogeneous, with limited long-term field monitoring and lifecycle-cost evidence. These limitations mean that passive strategies should be interpreted as climate- and context-dependent rather than as universal effect sizes.Downloads
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