Courtyard’ Design as a Sustainable Tool for Classrooms’ Lighting and Thermal Performance

Sustainable Architecture is capable of creating sustainable buildings with comfortable indoor spaces and less energy consumption. Courtyards as passive design concept is a sustainable design tool since many ages. Proper courtyards’ ratios integration in school buildings can help in improving the thermal comfort and lighting in the classrooms with less energy consumption especially in the hot arid climates like UAE. This research used a qualitative methodology based on IESve software to evaluate the effect of variation in the proportions of the school courtyards on the thermal performance and lighting of classrooms, the models of the study were built according to Koch-Nielsen assumption courtyards’ ratios for a school building as a case study. The results of this research confirmed that the ratios of closed courtyards affect the thermal performance of the buildings based on investigation rooms. The findings of this research showed that the 2X courtyards width to height ratio succeeded to reduce the inner investigation room’s air temperature with about 4–6 °C compared to 3X and open X Courtyards’ cases. Additionally, the simulation revealed that the investigation rooms in the open X and the 3X courtyards’ cases had the highest daylight and lux levels, which was to be expected given that both cases featured fewer sheltered outside spaces with greater solar exposure than the 2X courtyard. Finally, the 2X courtyard case had the best threshold glare level for the investigation room at roughly 212.48 cd/m2, with significant difference from the other cases. This study can help in designing sustainable schools.