According to an investigation carried out by the architect Claudio Vásquez, between 2003 and 2011 a total of 45 premium office buildings were built in Santiago de Chile, of which 75% have their facades covered with glass.
"This is an international trend that has been called office buildings," explains the architect. The objective of the study is to analyze the associated energy expenditure and the temperature and humidity inside buildings with this type of façade.
The study was funded by Fondecyt and to carry it out it was necessary to select a sample of seven buildings of about 800 square meters of surface. The work was carried out over a year, from August 2011 to the same month in 2012.
During the research, elements associated with humidity, temperature, lighting and energy consumption of these properties were measured with the idea of knowing the comfort niver of these establishments.
According to the results obtained, inside these offices there is a high level of solar radiation, as Vásquez describes it: "The transparency of the glass produces a greenhouse effect, which means that the furniture is heated and emits a heat that the glass does not let out".
Consequently, situations of extreme temperatures occur: in one of the buildings of the study, during a weekend, temperatures above 40% were recorded while outside the temperature recorded was 28. This reason led to keeping the air conditioner on all year round at a high intensity.
The buildings analyzed consume between 45 and 90 kwh/m2 for air conditioning. On the other hand, the consumption of an energy-efficient tower is between 20 and 30 kwh/m2.
