The Rose Garden Hotel, Enugu

Currently, the high consumption of fossil fuel energy in tropical hotels and the incidental high cost attached to it, has raised doubts and fears as to the possibility of our professionals to adapt within a sustainable manner to their immediate environmental problem. The quality of any building depends on the free flow of activities that will occur within and outside it with the consequent decisions on the fundamental form of the structure. It is also equally a good for designers to re-tool and re-engineer the role of natural ventilation in hotels, for the hot-humid tropical environment to a sustainable level. Indoor thermal comfort in buildings of the hot humid tropical environment, have been an age long concern for designers and users within the region but were never considered in hotel designs as they were expected to be mechanically ventilated. This study adopted descriptive survey, and ex post factor, case study research methods. The re-introduction of an adoptive native tropical architecture of this region, based on a holistic development that integrates the individual into the environment, with the buildings interacting with the atmosphere as the air is more humid. This allows for more thermal stability, and was found to be very effective and satisfying. From the results of this study, volumetric design principle, which is a combination of wind and stack (Bernoulli - Venturi effect) was found to be also an effective design strategy for thermal comfort and effective passive ventilation for this building.