User:Josh VdR/Sustainable architecture

Sustainable energy use[edit]
Main articles: Low-energy house and Zero-energy building

Energy efficiency over the entire life cycle of a building is the most important goal of sustainable architecture. Architects use many different passive and active techniques to reduce the energy needs of buildings and increase their ability to capture or generate their own energy. To minimize cost and complexity, sustainable architecture prioritizes passive systems to take advantage of building location with incorporated architectural elements, supplementing with renewable energy sources and then fossil fuel resources only as needed. Site analysis can be employed to optimize use of exploit local environmental resources such as daylight and ambient wind for heating and ventilation.

Energy use very often depends on whether the building gets its energy on-grid, or off-grid. Off-grid buildings do not use energy from provided by utility services and instead have their own independent energy production. They use on-site electricity storage while on-grid sites feed in excessive electricity back to the grid.

Sustainable building materials[edit]
See also: Green building and Natural building

Some examples of sustainable building materials include recycled denim or blown-in fiber glass insulation, sustainably harvested wood, Trass, Linoleum, sheep wool, hempcrete, roman concrete, panels made from paper flakes, baked earth, rammed earth, clay, vermiculite, flax linen, sisal, seagrass, expanded clay grains, coconut, wood fiber plates, calcium sandstone, locally obtained stone and rock, and bamboo, which is one of the strongest and fastest growing woody plants, and non-toxic low-VOC glues and paints. Bamboo flooring can be useful in ecological spaces since they help reduce pollution particles in the air. Vegetative cover or shield over building envelopes also helps in the same. Paper which is fabricated or manufactured out of forest wood is supposedly hundred percent recyclable, thus it regenerates and saves almost all the forest wood that it takes during its manufacturing process.

Water Usage [edit]

Sustainable buildings look for ways to conserve water. One strategic water saving design green buildings incorporate are green roofs. Green roofs have rooftop vegetation which captures storm drainage water. This function not only collects the water for further uses but also serves as a good insulator that can aid in the urban heat island effect. Another strategic water efficient design is treating wastewater so it can be reused again.

Criticism[edit]
There are conflicting ethical, engineering, and political orientations depending on the viewpoints.

There is no doubt Green Technology has made its headway into the architectural community, the implementation of given technologies have changed the ways we see and perceive modern day architecture. While green architecture has been proven to show great improvements of ways of living both environmentally and technologically the question remains, is all this sustainable? Many building codes have been demeaned to international standards. "LEED" (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) has been criticized for exercising flexible codes for building to follow. Contractors do this to save as much money as they possibly can. For example, a building may have solar paneling but if the infrastructure of the building's core doesn't support that over a long period of time improvements would have to be made on a constant basis and the building itself would be vulnerable to disasters or enhancements. With companies cutting paths to make shortcuts with sustainable architecture when building their structures it fuels to the irony that the "sustainable" architecture isn't sustainable at all. Sustainability comes in reference to longevity and effectiveness. Calculation methodologies of zero-energy buildings may vary. Energy stemming from inputs such as building materials, on-site production, and transportation of resources is often not accounted for.

Ethics and Politics also play into sustainable architecture and its ability to grow in urban environment. Conflicting viewpoints between engineering techniques and environmental impacts still are popular issues that resonate in the architectural community. With every revolutionary technology or innovation there comes criticisms of legitimacy and effectiveness when and how it is being utilized. Many of the criticisms of sustainable architecture do not reflect every aspect of it but rather a broader spectrum across the international community.