The Energy Saving Buildings

As the dawn of the twenty-first century approaches, the current pattern of unsustainable, inequitable and unstable asymmetric demographic and economic growth has forced many segments of society to think about the problem: how can we meet our demand in the future with the limited resources. The answer is to be sustainable. In the past, we always focus on the field of energy. But with the development of technology, we extend the range to buildings.

According to the information from data basis, urbanization increased rapidly in this decade. In this background, more and more buildings are put up in the urban areas. But those buildings almost are not the sustainable buildings. Because of this situation, they may waste a lot of energy and generate many environment problems. Thus, it is necessary to design sustainable buildings.

When we talk about sustainable buildings, we may have many imagines about it. However, what is the actually define for sustainable buildings?  According to the OECD project, sustainable buildings can be defined as those building that minimum adverse impact on the built a natural environment, in terms of the buildings themselves, their immediate surroundings and the broader regional and global settings (G. John, Derek, 2005). The OECD project identified five objectives for sustainable buildings:

1. Resource efficiency

2. Energy efficiency (including greenhouse gas emissions reduction)

3. Pollution prevention (including indoor air quality and noise abatement)

4. Harmonization with environment

5. Integrated and systemic approaches

These five objectives involve the whole life of building. The building includes indoor and outdoor spaces. Both parts should be designed sustainable respectively. It contains exterior walls, the roof, floors, windows and doors. For the aim to be sustainable, there are many great design for the buildings. For example, the wall must protect the enclose space and also can be as a temperature moderator. Therefore, the temperature will keep in a stable level which can reduce the electricity consumption by using air condition. In addition, I saw another wonderful design in our campus---- the building Tyree. In this building, the energy rate is five stars which mean that it is a great sustainable building. And the design for outdoor wall impress on me. The outdoor wall in this building is like a window. The wall is combined with many tiny windows which can move. When the temperature increases, the window will close to keep out sunshine. If not, the window will open again to absorb quantity of heat. Because there are many other sustainable design in this building, so that the energy cost is in a very low level. If almost buildings can be designed like this one, I believe that the environment problem which caused by large amount of buildings won’t appear anymore.

To sum up, although some opponents argue that the cost for sustainable buildings is expensive, the benefits which we get cannot be ignored. The sustainable building design is a tendency in the future because of the limited resources and increasing concern about environment. 

Reference: 

[1] Kloppel L, http://www.azom.com/news.asp?newsID=966); 2001.

[2] McDonough W, Braungart M. Towards a sustaining architecture for the 21st century: the                    promise of cradle-to-cradle design. UNEP Industry and Environment. April–September 2003.              p. 13–6.