Sustainable Architecture: The Built Environment

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‘Buildings account for 30% to 40% of world energy use, 25% to 35% of greenhouse gas emissions, and 50% to 70% or world electricity use’ (Balcomb, 1998). The built environment is responsible for a huge part of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Sustainable architecture seeks to create healthy buildings for our environment that only get better with time. The key idea is to reduce the amount of energy, i.e., use less energy to provide the same service or goods. It is interesting to note that residential and commercial buildings have different emission patterns. This table shows the dominant causes of CO² emissions: Residential Commercial Electrical appliances/plug-in equipment 51% 12% Climate control 13% 63% It can be deduced from this that …show more content…

It’s an approach, an attitude. It shouldn’t really even have a label. It should just be architecture’ (Maxman, 1993). The use of natural resources to generate improved comfort conditions in buildings is cited in the last century in many places and cultures and is an ancient practice. Today, bioclimatic design has become somewhat of a science due to the technological advancements and tools used to accurately predict how certain concepts would work. The passive and active strategies are the two approaches that strengthen each other where passive systems integrate climate and active systems rely on a certain amount of energy input. Passive systems satisfy user comfort with natural sources like natural air or daylighting while active systems require mechanical systems but do not suffer from unwanted heat or cooling. Many climates have a set of guidelines and principles to aid bioclimatic design, however, it must be noted that every building should have a unique and tailored design to optimise the passive or active systems. To incorporate systems to gain their full potential, the design should begin with them in mind. To achieve comfort and energy efficiency in a building, many strategies can be used and these can be classified by: climate, typology, building systems (fabric, services, function), energy input (passive, active). These strategies contain different facets that become applicable to various buildings. Burberry (1983) directs that: ‘…. strategic design depends upon knowledge and understanding of building performance and upon the making of overall decisions with understanding of their thermal

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