Building Relationships

This chapter describes how digital immersion, changing social values, and environmental and economic pressures have the potential to create a paradigm shift in relationships between people and their built environment with the growing sustainability imperative. It responds to emerging opportunities provided by digital technologies for the construction, maintenance, and heritage curation of the life of buildings, and draws on aligned changes in thinking apparent in manufacturing, healthcare, business, and education in the 21st century. The ideas that shape this chapter are relevant to architects and educators, but also to scholars and practitioners across disciplines because they provide an innovative approach in responding to the types of changes currently impacting societies worldwide.

The End of Sand

This chapter focuses on how sand, the second most used natural resource on earth after water, is facing one of the greatest environmental challenges of the new millennium. Sand is a crucial material used in all sorts of building projects, from asphalt, concrete, and glass. Globally, construction accounts for the largest portion of the 15 billion tons of sand consumed annually. Yet, sand is a finite resource and the depletion of alluvial sand used in construction is destroying the ecosystem of riverbeds, sea beds, and coastal beaches, and is contributing seriously to climate change. This chapter will discuss how these threats have developed, including coastal construction and erosion, river dredging, and sand “mafias” whereby illegal sand miners strip beaches and use sand in inferior concrete that has led to building collapses and deaths. The authors then discuss potential solutions to this crisis, including regulation and enforcement of environmental and construction standards, as well as materials substitution such as desert sand, sand created from sandstone, and recycled glass.

Urban Quality Assessment at the Neighborhood Scale

This chapter describes the approach adopted within the framework of a multi-destination development project; the goal of which is to promote innovative technologies and methods to evaluate the environmental quality of an urban district under construction. This method of analysis has been tested on an area located in the former historic district of the Fiera di Milano, where a series of typical urban functions are inserted within a large public park. The success of the work is represented by indicators (air quality, acoustic, microclimate) that relate to the finished district and that can be compared with average values in the same city. The system may constitute a protocol capable of bringing benefits to local authorities. This type of assessment could be requested of developers/builders for complex projects, resulting in changes to the initial plan if the assessment identifies critical issues related to the design choices (orientation of buildings, green areas, traffic emissions, etc.) with the ultimate goal of creating neighborhoods with better environmental conditions.

Energetic Forms of Matter

One of the challenges that architects and designers are confronted with in contemporary contexts is the need to address an ethical responsibility towards the health of the environment through understanding the energetic processes embedded in materials and their compositions. A scientific explanation of material fundamentals, including chemistry, physical structure, and embodied energy, provides the greatest insight to material property performance values and relative environmental impacts. This information aids architects in making informed decisions about building materials in the design process. This chapter addresses the book topic of reusable and sustainable building materials through the position that all matter is a form of energy, just as living systems are the transmutation of matter and energy. The seven major material groups, which include natural materials, non-technical ceramics, technical ceramics, metals, polymers, foams and elastomers, and composites, are presented with examples and applications discussed.

Eco-Friendly Construction

Increase in urbanization leads to more construction of houses, dams, and streets. Reduction of the global warming effects can be carried out by recycling of construction material and searching for eco-friendly construction material. Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced with the help of construction material which requires less energy for their production. The concept of eco-friendly construction is based on biomimetic (i.e., finding natural material with potential of endurance and self-cleaning properties). Construction materials like Portland cement and concrete can be replaced by eco-friendly biocement and bioconcrete. Production of biocement and bioconcrete can be done by using plants, algae, and bacteria. Use of less cement in concrete leads to less pollution. Concrete is the mixture of cement, sand, gravel, and water. By addition of pozzolan in concrete, the requirement of cement will be reduced. In the current review, major emphasis is given to eco-friendly construction material.

Determining Architecture's Footprint

Current approaches to designing sustainable buildings are inadequate for meeting environmental goals. Buildings continue to consume nearly half of all resources, and architects, engineers, and contractors remain complicit in their deficient environmental performance—as well as the consequential global overshoot of resource consumption. It is imperative that the AEC industry pursue an alternative approach to green rating systems with the intent to determine measurable, absolute outcomes. The most appropriate existing model is the ecological footprint (EF) method devised by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the University of British Columbia in the early 1990s. EF quantifies the human demand on the environment in terms of both resources and waste, translating these impacts into land area equivalents. This chapter aims to evaluate EF methodology for buildings by analyzing existing models and proposing new approaches while identifying their respective opportunities and limitations.

Comprehensive Evaluation for Mortars and Concretes Incorporating Wastes

Sustainability is concerned with the most efficient use of resources where the residues play an essential role. Trends in concrete technology include natural or artificial additions and additives in order to reduce the consumption of cement. The characterization of the wastes is of great importance with respect to the amount that must be incorporated into the matrices of construction materials both for its economic and engineering impacts (strength and durability). The authors study the impact in strength, durability, and sustainability of the use of finely ground waste of ferroalloys in concrete. The behavior of durability of sustainable concrete also is evaluated. The proportioning between traditional materials and these additions involves preliminary tests on pastes and mortars. Also, they study the impact of the use of different plastic wastes (polyethylene) in different percentages. They evaluated consistency, compressive strength, suction capability, and leaching.

Rethinking Waste Through Design

This chapter will study the proliferation of architectural follies that use recycled or recyclable materials in a move to promote better practices in waste and recycling. Given the slow uptake of this impetus in the architectural world proper, the text will investigate the obstacles in engaging in materially sustainable practices in the construction industry as well as case studies for rethinking currently problematic materials. However, while some improvements have been made in the construction industry's use of recycled materials, the industry often dismisses the afterlife of materials used throughout the process. What are the motivations of the industry and how can we incentivize circular thinking in an industry that produces hundreds of millions of tons of waste per year in the US?

Recycling and Reuse of Building Materials From Construction and Demolition

Urbanization is creating enormous pressure for the effective utilization of the existing land with demolition of old structures for new and modern structures. The debris produced in demolition of these structures are in large amount and disposal of this waste in sustainable manner is the biggest challenge being faced today and should be considered as a resource. With the increasing waste production and public concerns regarding the environment, it is desirable to recycle these materials. If suitably processed in appropriate industrial plants, these materials can be profitably used in concrete. This chapter highlights the composition of construction and demolition waste, the necessity for its recycling, and possibilities that can be implemented for its resourceful use, further focusing on current trends in this field by elaborating various ways to use these waste from laboratory research scale to commercially available technologies around the globe. The chapter concludes with future research directions and guidelines for sustainable use of these wastes.