Engineering Inc - March/April 2018 - 46

COURTESY OF FXFOWLE ARCHITECTS

Upper walkway,
Al Jamea tus
Saifiyah.

A Western
Solution
PROJECT: AL JAMEA
TUS SAIFIYAH
NAIROBI, KENYA
FIRM: DAGHER ENGINEERING
NEW YORK CITY

l Jamea tus Saifiyah in Nairobi,
Kenya, is one of four worldwide
educational campuses of the
Dawoodi Bohra community. The
Arabic school attracts students from around
the globe, creating an international learning
environment.
Dagher Engineering was engaged
to design the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems for the new
700,000-square-foot campus where construction began in 2013. With the imperative of minimizing the campus' carbon
footprint, Dagher worked closely with the
design architect as well as the local team of
architects and engineers to gain familiarity with regional construction techniques,
constraints and site limitations. That also
meant not simply applying today's standard
Western approach of using machines to off46

ENGINEERING INC. MARCH / APRIL 2018

set the loads with heating and
cooling.
"We had to consider the
annual maintenance of all the
machines and the electricity
cost for a standard, Western
solution," says Elias Dagher,
Elias Dagher
senior principal with Dagher
Engineering. "But in this location, they have daily power outages, which
would mean relying on emergency generators that burn oil creating pollution." Plus,
there was the question of who would maintain and repair mechanical systems.
Taking an alternative approach, engineers
applied advanced building modeling techniques to optimize the orientation of the
buildings to permit passive conditioning of
the indoor spaces and to maximize daylighting throughout. Solar studies facilitated the
incorporation of solar thermal and photovoltaic collections for domestic hot water
and electricity production, further reducing
the campus' impact on the environment.
The result is a low-maintenance, sustainable campus. Dagher Engineering
used state-of-the-art computer modeling
technology to revive concepts that were in
common use before the rise of cheap energy
and globalization. With computational
fluid dynamic modeling software, Dagher
engineers simulated indoor space conditions

through various meteorological conditions, optimizing critical portions of the
campus' buildings to provide
maximum comfort levels as
well as enhanced daylight.
There also were architectural constraints related to
cultural/religious elements
and climatic elements. "For example, we
had to be careful in locating openings for
ventilation to limit line of sight access while
also maximizing airflow."
This project demonstrates that, often,
the key is to use existing technology more
intelligently, rather than using ever more
expensive and complex solutions that rely
on the installation of energy-consuming
equipment and devices. Dagher's extensive
modeling studies showed that similar, if not
better, results can be accomplished by carefully planning building orientation, room
layouts, fenestration sizes and other facade
components to optimize temperature and
airflow within the buildings through passive
means.
The Nairobi campus was completed
April 2017, setting an example for sustainable growth in the region. ■
Tom Klemens is a freelance writer based
near Chicago and a registered Professional
Engineer in Illinois.

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