Final report

The Sustainable Global Technologies (SGT) Rock Village project was a great opportunity for us to challenge our knowledge with working in an environment and culture, which differs so much from our own. The outcome of this project is for a great part a result of the tremendous support and expertise we have got during this spring.

We want to thank everyone who has supported us during the way to reach our objectives.

• FINAL REPORT: Self-Sustainable Energy Solution for Rock Village (pdf)

Green building and Rating Tools

There are different rating systems to classify a certain structure to stand on ’How sustainable the building is’.

”Green building is the practice of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation and deconstruction. This practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Green building is also known as a sustainable or high performance building.”

International Rating Tools for Green Buildings

•  LEED (USA) 
• BREEAM (UK)
•  DGNB (Germany)
•  CASBEE (Japan)
•  HK-BEAM (Hong Kong)
• Green Star (Australia)

The above mentioned Rating Tools (called as Systems also) have common components as the following graphic. 

Green Buildings and how to create them?

 

Green building (also known as sustainable building) refers to a structure and using process that is environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from sitting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, till the demolition. This requires close cooperation of the design team, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages.

To create an ideal coordination between all parties, a dynamic process called the ‘integrated design process’, (IDP), has been developed. Larsson explained that the “[…] IDP is designed to allow the client and other stakeholders to develop and realize clearly defined and challenging functional, environmental and economic goals and objectives” (Larsson 2002)*.  

As not all buildings are complexes of electro-mechanical systems, architecture remains the main tool in the hand of the architect to deal with the local environment surrounding the structure. Simply put, by the full awareness of the local environment a user may easily create architecture without architects that manages to erect a suitable and comfortable shelter; that is the so-called Passive Buildings. The passive buildings are meant of using the consequences of internal spaces and the building material and technologies to improve the thermal behavior of the structure in temperature Gain/Lose process.

There are different rating systems to classify a certain structure to stand on ’How sustainable the building is’.

Having explained the above, the next post will interpret such information on the Rock Village architectural drawings  given to the planning team ; my observations on the concept.

*Larsson, N (2002) The integrated design process. Report on a national workshop, Ottawa: Natural Resources Canada

Building shape impact on the energy costs

Studies have shown that the building shape can have a significant impact on the energy costs of heating and cooling. The greatest opportunities for integrating ‘‘green’’ design strategies occur at the conceptual design stage. During this stage, many potential design alternatives are generated and their performance are roughly evaluated in order to select the most promising solutions. Planning Team is working currently on the analysis of architectural features of the Beehive formation of the project.

The thermal behavior of the building mass in heat gain/loss depends mainly on the surface/volume ratio.