The expression "touch the earht lightly" has become an ideom to represent Glenn Murcutt's work, which is claimed to be environmentally sensitive. The objective of the work presented in this paper is to investigate the actual perofmrance of three Murcutt's passive design buildings located in three differnt climates. The buildigns were hourly monitored and the users were interviewed to obtain information on the their thermal satisfaction of the space. The sensitivity of the desing strategies was analysed using thermal simulations. the results show that each building indeed performs well according to its context and needs. This study concludes that, although they are different, all strategies possess similar basic principles. They are (1) responsive to the users' requirements and the landscape, (2) properly oriented, (3) having appropriate shading, and (4) usign adequate thermal mass and insulation. The resutl is an architecture that not only is visually pleasing but also spatially and thermally comfortable.
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