1,721,079 research outputs found
Environmental Implications and Opportunities of Digital Fabrication
Full text linkSociety’s increasing concern for sustainability aspects is inducing the emergence of digital technologies to overcome the inefficiency and reduce environmental impacts in product manufacturing. As the use of digital processes such as 3D printing grows, innovative applications into large scale processes are emerging. The combined methods of computational design and robotic fabrication are demonstrating a large potential to expand architectural design and transform conventional construction processes. But, the most impressive impact may be their contribution to the improvement of sustainability in construction. The challenge of digital fabrication at building scale is to achieve efficiency in parameters such as material use, energy demands, durability, GHG emissions and waste production over the entire life cycle of a building. The goal of this paper is to investigate the environmental implications and opportunities of digital fabrication in construction. The research focuses specifically on measuring the flow of materials, embodied energy and potential environmental impacts associated with digital fabrication processes. With this objective, the case study of a wooden roof digitally fabricated is presented. The project was assessed according to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework and compared with a conventional wooden roof with similar function and structural capacity. The analysis highlighted the importance of material-efficient design to achieve high environmental benefits in digitally fabricated architecture. This research is the initial step towards the establishment of a knowledge base and the elaboration of guidelines that help designers to make more sustainable choices in the implementation of digital fabrication in construction
A Life-Cycle Approach to Building Energy Retrofitting: Bio-Based Technologies for Sustainable Urban Regeneration
Full text linkThe construction sector and, more specifically, the building renovation sector plays a decisive role in the achievement of the EU targets for the reduction of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The main strategies implemented by the EU are aimed, on one side, at increasing the number of buildings to be renovated and, on the other, at promoting deep renovation on the existing stock. The main objective is to drastically reduce the CO2 emissions associated with the energy consumption of buildings during their operation in consideration of the decarbonization targets by 2050. Several studies have shown that around 75% of the EU building stock needs energy retrofitting, and a significant amount of thermal insulation is expected to be installed on the building envelopes in order to decrease the energy losses. The carbon emission for the production of materials and construction might slow down the transition to a low carbon society and significantly reduce the carbon budget available by 2050. In this perspective, the paper shows the results of some recent research activities aimed at identifying alternative approaches based on the use of biogenic materials applied to the building envelope retrofitting. On one side, they meet the energy and CO2 targets established by the EU while promoting, on the other one, sustainable regeneration processes that include, among the others, the storage of CO2 in building elements and the efficient land use. A specific calculation tool, based on a dynamic LCA method, is introduced to holistically quantify the environmental benefits expected over time
Healing the European building stock with bio-based materials: do we have enough available land?
No full textThe renovation of the building stock in Europe: an essential opportunity to store carbon in buildings
Full text linkNew vernacular construction: Environmental awareness and territorial inclusivity
Full text linkStudies on vernacular architecture document the built heritage; discuss its preservation; and sometimes focus on its sustainability, expressing admiration for the wisdom it embodies. Traditional buildings are exemplary in terms of embodied environmental impact, but can hardly be transformed into ‘sustainable’ buildings in the contemporary sense, for legal, cost, technical, or cultural reasons. Today’s lifestyles and expectations of comfort are very different from the original ones. Much appreciation of vernacular buildings derives from an aestheticising approach that emphasises appearance and craftsmanship. Such appreciation is tied to the
perpetuation of ‘traditional’ forms but can lead to gentrify heritage and to design buildings that are unaffordable to local individuals and communities. We present not a literature review, but a theoretical proposal of a new vernacular, rooted in locality (origin of materials, socio-economic system, skills, etc., drawing inspiration from food self-sufficiency policies) and affordable by everyone – as it was the case with ‘traditional’ vernacular – but also able to respond to contemporary priorities such as counteracting climate change by opting for negative-embodied carbon materials, and meeting present expectations of comfort. Each of these criteria is discussed
in detail. Within such constraints, we claim there would still much scope for creativity and innovation in terms of architectural design, behavioural choices, and policy adoption. The analysis of four recent buildings designed by outstanding contemporary architects in three continents completes the paper, substantiating very different examples in tune with the proposed approach. Open questions – including regarding the possibility of future identification of quantitative thresholds to describe ‘new vernacular’ buildings – are discussed in the conclusion
Bio-based insulation materials: An opportunity for the renovation of European building stock
No full textFast-growing bio-based materials as an opportunity for storing carbon in exterior walls
No full textStoring carbon in construction products and building components seems a particularly attractive strategy for compensating the initial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from production and construction. Typically, in LCA methods, when a sustainable forestry management is assumed, biogenic carbon is not included in the calculation since forest products are considered as carbon neutral due to the full regeneration of biomass in forest at the end of a rotation period. The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of storing carbon in biogenic materials and lime-based products when they are used as construction materials and left long in a building. Five different alternative exterior walls with different construction technologies are compared. In the first two alternatives (STR and HEM), a significant amount of fast-growing biogenic material is used as thermal insulation, while the third (TIM) represents a typical timber frame structure with mineral insulation. The last two are traditional wall alternatives based on bricks (BRI) and cast concrete (CON) with an additional external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS) in EPS. A model based on a dynamic LCA is adopted to include timing in the calculation. The results, expressed in terms of radiative forcing in the atmosphere, show that storing carbon in fast-growing biogenic materials is much more efficient than in timber elements. The carbon stored in fast-growing biogenic materials is fully captured by crop regrowth only one year after construction, while a longer time is expected for forest products due to the long rotation period required for forest regrowth
Life cycle analysis of strengthening existing RC structures with R-PE-UHPFRC
Full text link(PE)-UHPFRC, a novel strain hardening ultra high-performance fiber reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) with low clinker content, using Ultra-High MolecularWeight Polyethylene (UHMW-PE) fibers, was developed for structural applications of rehabilitation. A comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to study the environmental impact of interventions on an existing bridge using PE-UHPFRC compared with conventional UHPFRC and post-tensioned reinforced concrete methods in three categories of global warming potential (GWP), cumulative energy demand (CED), and ecological scarcity (UBP). The results showed 55% and 29% decreases in the environmental impact of the PE-UHPFRC compared with reinforced concrete and conventional UHPFRC methods, respectively, which highlighted the effectiveness of this material for the rehabilitation/strengthening of structures from the viewpoint of environmental impact
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