Improving the Weather

This chapter proposes an approach to thermal comfort that increases occupant pleasure and reduces energy use by connecting architecture's material and environmental dimensions. Today's dominant thermal comfort model, the predicted mean vote (PMV), calls for steady-state temperatures that are largely unrelated to building design decisions. A more recent alternative approach, the adaptive thermal comfort (ATC) model, ties comfort to outdoor conditions and individual experience. Yet reliance on HVAC technology to provide building comfort hampers how such ideas are integrated into building design. This chapter outlines the historical background of the PMV and ACT models to understand the current status of thermal comfort research and practice. It then uses four recent buildings to outline how the insights of adaptive comfort research can be translated to bespoke comforts through spatial, material, formal, and other design strategies.

Life-Cycle Assessment-Based Environmental Performance Targets for Buildings

The role of targets in delivering meaningful performance improvements for designing new buildings and retrofitting existing building stocks is important. A piecemeal approach of incomprehensive assessments around insignificant changes falls short of achieving deep cuts in impacts. Most of the current assessments are not based on well-defined performance targets. The chapter is centered around exploring the utility of the concept of planetary boundaries for setting well-grounded benchmarking systems in guiding the transformation of the built environment that significantly contributes to the overall environmental impact of the economy. It discusses the role of life cycle assessment, environmental product declarations and product category rules, and how these and relevant standards and guides can be used in tandem with tools and processes used in design offices such as building information modeling. It concludes by charting the need for research on taking concepts such as planetary boundaries to building level benchmarking systems that support better design practices.

Green Charcoal

The two main challenges that future cities will face are the unavailability of material resources and the waste generated as a result of resource consumption. The chapter exhibits applied research into green charcoal that addresses the crisis of the fourth industrial revolution through the development of a biomaterial consisting of luffa, charcoal, and soil. It justifies that building materiality must be intentionally designed to transform over time and support an ecosystem of plants, insects, and birds to create self-sustaining natural habitats for all lifeforms. The approach to building materiality and building systems is performance-based, circular, and net positive, thus representing a departure from conventional architectural practices. It provides a framework for high-growth countries like India to reverse the resource crisis and achieve a competitive advantage over mature economies through such initiatives.

Teardown Index

Replacing older homes with new ones constructed to higher efficiency standards is one way to raise the operating efficiency of building stocks. However, new buildings require large amounts of embodied energy to construct, and it can take years before more efficient operations offset carbon emissions associated with new construction. This chapter looks at the carbon dioxide emission payback period of newly constructed, efficient single-family homes in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the authors find that it takes over 150 years for the operation to equal the embodied carbon associated with the of a typical high-efficiency new home. The findings suggest that current policies aimed at reducing emissions by replacing older homes with new high-efficiency buildings should be reconsidered.

Building Codes Don't Measure Up

It is only in the case of fire that materials are considered by the American International Building Codes across an aggregation of scales (i.e., a building, a block, a district) leaving many other essential factors of material performance neglected. Mostly ignored are environmental and social parameters that also present forms of risk. This chapter uses the cities of New York and Chicago and three performance characteristics as case studies to examine additional material impacts at the city-scale. Case studies analyze material maintenance requirements against urban disinvestment, moisture absorption capacity against mold rates within flood-prone communities, and embodied carbon against material lifespan averages across cities. Findings reveal connections between material performance and economic, health, and energy implications across the city, suggesting the need for more broadly defined urban material performance standards.

Post-Normal Material Practice

This chapter explores building as a form of material inquiry. The process of building generates new ideas and questions that remain latent in unbuilt designs. These ideas and questions are uniquely trans-scalar and boundary spanning as compared to material inquiries that focus on isolated material attributes. Building projects embed material inquiries within the open systems that make up our environment. Thinking about material performance in this way can co-produce political, social, economic, and ecologic relationships that extend design agency beyond the artifact.

Toxicity in Architectural Plastics

The building industry lacks a holistic and integrated method for assessing the possible human health risks attendant to using materials that have been verified as toxic. In particular, it lacks an open-source, interactive interface for measuring the health risks associated with sourcing, manufacturing, selecting, installing, using, maintaining, and disposing of building-based polymers. Because of their high degree of chemical synthesis, polymers are typically more toxic than wood, glass, or concrete; yet architects, engineers, builders, clients, and the general public remain poorly informed about the deadly accumulation of synthetic polymers that originate in the building industry and that pervade our air, water, and bodies. This question should be central to the very definition and practice of life-cycle assessment, and this chapter outlines a process for developing an industry-based life-cycle index of human health in building (LCI-HHB). After all, traditional LCAs are of little help to anyone not healthy enough to enjoy them.

Social Life-Cycle Assessment for Building Materials

The goal of sustainable design and development is threefold, including economic, environmental, and social sustainability. While there are well-established methods for assessing the economic and environmental performance of products and buildings, the determination of social performance is less clear. This chapter explores the emerging field of social life cycle assessment (S-LCA), particularly as it relates to building materials and construction. This chapter includes 1) an introduction to and overview of S-LCA, summarized case studies of S-LCA; 2) a discussion of the relevance of S-LCA in sustainable design practice and education; 3) an examination of the role of environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA) in building performance standards and certifications as a model for the incorporation of S-LCA; and 4) a reflection on areas for future research, including the addition of social science theory and practice for methodology, criteria, and metric development.

Fluid Matters

Water interactions with building materials are addressed for major material groups including natural materials, non-technical ceramics, technical ceramics, metals, polymers, elastomers, and foams. Water quantities and qualities are identified across the life-cycle stages of building materials from sourcing and extraction, manufacturing, construction installation, operation and maintenance, and recyclability. With background information on the water cycle and physiochemistry properties, chemical interactions of building materials are highlighted to demonstrate the range of environmental impacts that building materials have upon water resources. Water consumption metrics are also correlated to the energy footprints of building material production and manufacturing processes. Various water impact calculation methods are referenced, and an overall assessment theorem is introduced for calculating the embodied water footprint of building materials. Example sum totals are indicated for each major material group in a comparative sourcing-to-operation framework.

The Embodied Impact of Existing Building Stock

This chapter provides the reader with a better understanding of the life cycle environmental impacts, with a focus on the embodied impact of existing building stock. A systematic literature review is conducted to paint a clear picture of the current research activities and findings. The major components of embodied impact and parameters influencing the embodied impact are outlined and explained. Lastly, this chapter discusses the major barriers for the embodied impact assessment, and a potential analysis framework is proposed at the end.