With the industry reaching new material heights, creating products which are physically beneficial to the environment, rating tools are now taking the next step towards aiming for totally sustainable and healthy development. Rating tools are now attempting to assess another crucial aspect of the ESD world, that being the social sustainability of buildings. Different from the pragmatic physical aspects of creating an environmentally sustainable development, rating tools such as Greenstar assess the social and psychological impact of buildings and how through considered design the health and wellbeing of the occupant can be taken into consideration.

How Induction Technology Brings Hope For Future Efficiency

How CLT Is Becoming the Next Star of the Building Industry:

 Discovering newer and more sustainable materials for use in construction, is one of the key focuses of designers today. Aiming to find a material which performs the same as conventional construction methods, which also reduces the impact on the environment is a difficult task. However, with the ever increasing demand for sustainable materials many innovative technologies have emerged which attempt to fill the void. One such material is Cross Laminated Timber or CLT.

Designing For Others

Architectural Interventions Improving the Environment and Biodiversity

The effect of urbanisation and urban development on the natural world has been extremely harmful. The built environment’s impact on disrupting migration patterns, habitat destruction and the general effect on the decline of biodiversity has been extremely detrimental. Therefore, through the introduction of various architectural interventions within the city, habitats can be recreated and animal colonies can be somewhat re-established improving the overall quality of our environment and promoting biodiversity which is essential to the health of the ecosystem.

Environmentally Responsive Design and Green Architecture

Sustainability and environmental performance goals are presently major contributing factors to design choices. Each new building attempts to take one step further in being even more environmentally conscious than the last. Although this process is extremely beneficial to the environment and surrounding ecosystem, where is this race to create a totally “Green building” heading? Structures are now emerging that look more like nature than building, with towering green walls and sprawling roof gardens disguising any distinguishable architectural element. This raises the question, are we going over board? Surely sustainable design does not mean a building which is literally green.

One of the most influential factors to consider when studying ecologically sustainable development, is the advantageous affect that passive cooling and heating can have on the efficiency of a home. This involves the careful selection of materials appropriate to the climate in which the building is situated, the thorough consideration of the orientation of the building to allow adequate ventilation and appropriate solar heat gain and various other factors. By considering all of these aspects the efficiency of the building can increase dramatically, whilst also drastically decreasing the cost of heating and cooling the building.

The Evidence of Suitability method using the Deemed to Satisfy Provisions of Part J of the Energy Efficiency section of the NCC Volume 1 (formally the BCA) have been chosen as the most appropriate method to assess the compliance of the proposed development.