An agenda for the Management of contemporary Sustainable houses

What is it about?

The evolution of sustainable design and Construction Management over the past ten years has produced a lot of literature on environmental sustainability and development. But despite this progress in the last ten years it is still a big challenge to designers, architects, landscape designers, etc. and all other professions that are related to the field of environmental science. . The goal of this paper is to simply create a framework for more accurate approach towards sustainable planning, design and development. The Objective of this paper includes to architecturally defining energy sustainable design in our sustainable Buildings; it is also to stress the concept of green building through design guidelines. This paper outlines, recommend and also create architectural design for sustainability and eliminate unsustainable elements in our building.

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An agenda for the Management of contemporary Sustainable houses Dr.Ifeanyi Obi * Department of Architecture, Girne American University, Turkey E mail: obiifeanyi@gau.edu.tr A B S T R A C T The evolution of sustainable design and Construction Management over the past ten years has produced a lot of literature on environmental sustainability and development. But despite this progress in the last ten years it is still a big challenge to designers, architects, landscape designers, etc. and all other professions that are related to the field of environmental science. . The goal of this paper is to simply create a framework for more accurate approach towards sustainable planning, design and development. The Objective of this paper includes to architecturally defining energy sustainable design in our sustainable Buildings; it is also to stress the concept of green building through design guidelines. This paper outlines, recommend and also create architectural design for sustainability and eliminate unsustainable elements in our building. . CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2017) 1(2), 33-37. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2017.3646 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2017 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 1.1 Sustainable Construction and Architecture Sustainable building could be defined as an environmentally designed building aimed to limit the effect on our natural environment. These could be achieved through the use of renewable resources or elements from the environment to build (construct) the building (Dawson, 2006). Our built environment involves many holistic approaches and this can be termed as a green approach. A green building could simply be defined as a building constructed on sustainable basic principles (Guy & Farmer, 2006). This system of approach, in other words “Green Approach” is designed to measure and control the interaction between our man-made (Built Environment) and the environment. Therefore various elements of the building, for example, windows, floors, roofs etc can substantially increase or reduced the level of impact in our environment. In other words, the more sustainable they are, the less the negative impact on the building and the environment and vice versa (Ofori, 1998).Every element that are integrated together to make a building should always be considered in other to achieve a sustainable building (Steemers, 2003). An energy efficient building lays its emphasis on the health of the environment, dwellers and the future effect on other environmental factor like the climate. This study aims to use existing building elements in William’s Ecovillage to create a framework for developing and evaluating the sustainability of buildings in Ecovillages in general, through research experiments on the building elements. This research involves a case study of the building elements of the community house at William’s Eco Village in Colrain, Massachusetts a start-up village; which will deliver the factors for the proposed ecological guidelines. 1.1.1 Problems The evolution of sustainable design and Construction over the past ten years has produced a lot of literature on environmental sustainability and development. But despite this progress in the last ten years it is still a big challenge to designers, architects, landscape designers, etc. and all other professions that are related to the field of environmental science. From my study, I have come to realize that great percentage of factors that degrade our environment come from building activities and design of men. Designing of our man-made environment should as much as possible realign itself to the natural system of the environment. Attempts have been made to create a system of approach for sustainable development but none has clearly been defined over the years. Many authors have tried to develop a systematic approach to the environmental challenges we are facing today but not great many achievements have been made. There has been great extent of neglect on the building element, their quality and how they react to the environment. 1.1.2 Design Differences in design also bring about difference in sustainable approach, most times sustainable developments in buildings are defined in general, without due to consideration to the different building types (Bonnette and Kirsten, 2004). For example sustainable approach for a residential building type might not be sustainable for commercial building type. Therefore, sustainable development should be defined individually as it affects each building design type (Hill, & Bowen, 1997). 1.1.3 Building Every building is made up of elements or building parts. These elements are integrated to form a building. Each element of any building is whole and has its own distinct capability and reaction to the same environmental factor. Throughout my literature review, I rarely came across literatures that dealt on the issue of building sustainability around its different element as this paper will do. Insulation, thermal massing, orientation are elements considered during building design so to neglect their relationship individually to sustainable design guidelines is tantamount to failure in creating design frame work for building sustainable development(Van Buerenn & Priemus, 2002; Arenibafo, 2017;Alizadehsalehi et al., 2015). The relationship between design building element and sustainable frame work will be developed in the course of this paper.

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