Characterisation of representative building typologies for social housing projects in Brazil and its energy performance

In Brazil the housing deficit is around 5.5 million houses. To address this need, the government created a programme called “My house, My life”. The main subsidies of the programme are for families earning up to three times the minimum wage. In order to formulate strategies for more energy efficiency buildings, it is necessary to understand the thermal and energy performance of what is being built. This article defines representative projects for typologies being built in the Brazilian social housing sector through the analysis of 108 projects considering two groups of income levels and investigates the thermal and energy performance of the representative projects in relation to the Regulation for Energy Efficiency Labelling of Residential Buildings in Brazil for two bioclimatic zones. Five representative building models were defined. Considering the most common features found on the sample, the study suggests the importance of addresing energy efficiency measures on the sector since current building techniques for social housing shows a tendency towards a low performance in relation to the thermal and energy performance criteria of the Energy Labelling especially for lower income projects. This provides a basis for future policy and allows for more in depth studies within the sector.