Renata Tubelo

Contact

• workRoom B34 Lenton Firs
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work+44 (0)1157484844
• Renata.Tubelo@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

Renata is an Assistant Professor in Sustainable Architecture and Climate Literacy at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Nottingham (UoN).

Renata qualified as an Architect and Urbanist in Brazil in 2008 and she is an accredited architect by the Brazilian Council of Architecture and Urbanism (CAU/RS). She also holds a MSc qualification in Civil Engineering and a PhD in Architecture. Renata has a strong background in research with over 10 years' research experience in building performance evaluation and Fabric First approach. Renata is a Certified Passive House Designer by the Passive House Institute. Renata completed a Postgraduate Certification in Higher Education in 2024 and she has achieved the status of Fellow (FHEA) by the AdvanceHE. She teaches in the MArch Architecture and Sustainable Design and MEng Architectural Environment Engineering programmes.

Research Summary

Renata is a member of Buildings, Energy and Environment (BEE) Research Group and over the past 10 years, she has been involved in a series of ground-breaking research projects.

• Discovering Serenity and Well-being in Churchyards was a collaborative research project among the University of Nottingham, St Peter's Church and Nottingham City Council. Through interviews, focus group discussions, and surveys, the study investigated how users perceive and experience St Peter's Churchyard by looking at community views, historical narratives, and environmental factors.

• Nottingham Carbon Neutral Housing Project: Cost vs. Carbon Retrofit Roadmap was funded by the UK Government through the flagship Community Renewal Fund. The project involved business, academic and research partners. It looked to bridge the current knowledge gap between retrofit theory and practice from the technical and financial perspectives. The outputs of this project can be seen within the Nottingham Climate Emergency Design Initiative (CEDI) website, which consists of a network of built environment professionals working together to help Nottingham on its path for a zero-carbon future. The aim of the initiative is to enable the delivery of buildings and developments aligned with the City's carbon neutrality targets.

• Active Building Centre (ABC-RP) project was funded by Innovate UK and had partnerships across different academic institutions and industry. ABC-RP UoN sought to optimise grid and energy services, contributed to the research on active self-sufficient buildings and helped develop awareness of energy use and behaviour.

• Sustainable Community Energy Networks (SCENe) was an awarded winning Innovate UK funded research project. SCENe developed a pioneering business model and energy infrastructure for a community energy scheme.

• Re-inhabiting the City was a cross-disciplinary collaborative research project that involved the University of São Paulo (USP), the University of Birmingham and the UoN, funded by both UK Universities and São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). The project focused on the analysis of temporary urbanism on a deprived Brazilian community looking at short-term participatory strategies for its regeneration and reuse.

POCHAMPALLI, P., TUBELO, R., RODRIGUES, L., GILLOT, L. & NASH, R. Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation of Energy-Efficient Retrofit Strategies for Pre-1930s Mid-Terrace Houses in the UK. Buildings 2024, 14, 3849. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14123849

AGUILAR-PEREZ, Y., RODRIGUES, L., BECCARELLI, P., TUBELO, R. (2023). Post-Occupancy Evaluation in Post-Disaster Social Housing in a Hot-Humid Climate Zone in Mexico. Sustainability 15 (18): 13443. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151813443

ZUNE, M., TUBELO, R., RODRIGUES, L., GILLOTT, M. (2021). Improving Building Thermal Performance Through an Integration of Passivhaus Envelope and Shading in a Tropical Climate. Energy and Buildings. v.253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111521

TUBELO, R., NAGHIYEV, E., GILLOTT, M., RODRIGUES, L., SHIPMAN, R. (2021). Assessing the Impact of Lockdown Due to COVID-19 on the Electricity Consumption of a Housing Development in the UK. In: Littlewood J.R., Howlett R.J., Jain L.C. (eds) Sustainability in Energy and Buildings 2021. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 263. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6269-0_4

TUBELO, R., RODRIGUES, L., GILLOTT, M., ZUNE, M. (2021). Comfort within Budget: Assessing the Cost-Effectiveness of Envelope Improvements in Single-Family Affordable Housing. Sustainability, 13(6): 3054. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063054

TUBELO, R., RODRIGUES, L., GILLOTT, M. (2021). Characterising Brazilian housing through an investigation of policies, architecture and statistics. The Journal of Architecture. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2021.1895279

RODRIGUES, L., GONCALVES, J. C. S., TUBELO, R., PORTER, N., MIRZAEI, P., KRAFTL, P., ANDRES, P., MICHAELSKI, R., MULFARTH, R. C. K. (2020). Chapter 14: Temporary Interventions for Urban Regeneration in the City Centre of São Paulo, Brazil. In: ANDRES, L. & ZHANG, Y. (eds). Transforming cities through temporary urbanism: A comparative international overview. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-61752-3. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030617523

RODRIGUES, L., TUBELO, R., PASOS, A., GONCALVES, J. C. S., WOOD, C., GILLOTT, M. (2020). M. Quantifying airtightness in Brazilian residential buildings with focus on its contribution to thermal comfort. Building Research and Information. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2020.1825064

RODRIGUES, L., GILLOTT, M., WALDRON, J., CAMERON, L., TUBELO, R., SHIPMAN, R., EBBS, N., BRADSHAW-SMITH, C. (2020). User engagement in community energy schemes: A case study at the Trent Basin in Nottingham, UK. Sustainable Cities and Society. v61. 2020. pp. 213-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102187

TUBELO, R., RODRIGUES, L., GILLOTT, M., GONCALVES SOARES, J. (2018). Cost-effective Envelope Optimisation for Social Housing in Brazil's Moderate Climates Zones. Building and Environment. v133. 2018. pp. 213-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.01.038

TUBELO, R., RODRIGUES, L., GILLOTT, M. (2014). A Comparative Study of the Brazilian Energy Labelling System and the Passivhaus Standard for Housing. Buildings 2014, 4, 207-221. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings4020207

Future Research

Renata would welcome inquiries from potential PhD candidates from Home and International countries who are interested in the following research areas: sustainable architecture & design, energy efficiency & thermal comfort, building performance evaluation, energy modelling and monitoring, building retrofit, Fabric First approach and Passive House standard.