Copan Building: How Brazilian Modernism Mastered Sustainable Design

The COPAN Building employs several key bioclimatic design elements. First, its massive concrete structure provides thermal inertia, absorbing and slowly releasing heat to regulate indoor temperatures, keeping the building cooler during the day and warmer at night. Second, horizontal concrete brise-soleils shade the north and northwest facades, reducing heat gain and glare. Third, the building maximizes natural ventilation through its design, allowing for airflow to dissipate heat and maintain air quality. Finally, its strategic orientation, with a curved facade, optimizes solar shading and natural light, with the north and northwest facades shaded and the south and southeast facades capturing sunlight without excessive heat gain. These elements work in concert to create a comfortable and energy-efficient living environment.

The COPAN Building's use of concrete is crucial to its sustainability because concrete provides significant thermal inertia. This means that the concrete absorbs and stores heat, helping to regulate the indoor temperature. During the day, the concrete absorbs heat, keeping the building cooler, and at night, it releases the stored heat, keeping the building warmer. This thermal regulation minimizes the reliance on artificial heating and cooling systems, thereby reducing energy consumption and contributing to the building's overall sustainability.

In the COPAN Building, brise-soleils serve to provide solar protection and promote natural ventilation. They are strategically placed on the north and northwest facades to shade them from direct sunlight. This shading reduces heat gain and minimizes glare inside the building, thus enhancing occupant comfort. This placement is particularly effective because the north and northwest sides of a building often receive significant solar exposure, especially during the hotter parts of the day.

The COPAN Building exemplifies Brazilian modernism's focus on environmental design, which flourished between 1930 and 1964. This approach prioritized integrating buildings with their environment to create comfortable and energy-efficient spaces. The COPAN Building achieves this through its use of thermal mass, solar shading, and natural ventilation, demonstrating that thoughtful design can create comfortable living spaces even in high-density urban environments. Modern architects and designers can learn from the COPAN's example by adopting passive design strategies, such as thermal mass, solar shading, and natural ventilation, to create more sustainable and resilient buildings that meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The 2018 study on the COPAN Building, published in "Energy & Buildings," investigated the thermal performance of the building through fieldwork and computer simulations. The fieldwork involved on-site measurements of environmental variables in four residential units during warm and cooler periods and included interviews with 100 occupants. Thermal dynamic computer simulations were performed using the Thermal Analysis Simulation Software (TAS). This research was important because it provided empirical data and analysis to validate the effectiveness of the COPAN Building's bioclimatic design strategies, offering valuable insights for modern sustainable design practices. The study demonstrated the real-world performance of the COPAN's features and its impact on energy efficiency and occupant comfort.