Basic Principles of Sustainable Building Design

Basic Principles of Sustainable Building Design

What is a sustainable building?

The sustainable building or green building is a design philosophy that focuses on increasing the efficiency of the usage of resources like energy, water, and materials along with reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during and after the construction. The process is planned through creating better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation and demolition.

The main aim of sustainable building is to minimize the adverse effects of building components on the environment. It starts with optimized building design, material selection, and taking energy conservative measures.

Buildings around the world make use of a variety of resources that are responsible for generating waste and releasing atmospheric emissions. The upgraded facilities and evergrowing demand for new, advanced amenities that are accessible, secure, and healthy put pressure on the building owners to meet these expectations while also focusing on minimizing environmental impact. This is when sustainable building design plays a role and becomes a helpful resource. The sustainable design helps not only in reducing the operating costs and carbon footprints but also in developing the building resiliency.

Resource and energy-efficient, eco-friendly buildings are beneficial to the environment and community. Green building becomes the net producer and exporter of resources, materials, energy and water rather than being the net consumer for sustaining life by preserving and restoring the surrounding habitat.

Sustainable building ensures the least disruptive and most efficient use of water, energy, land and other resources.

This stands on the ground of fundamental principles as follows:

1.

Conserve And Protect Water

One of the goals of sustainable buildings is to conserve water, every sustainable building must use water efficiently and engage more in reusing or recycling water wherever possible and only when it's appropriate.

2.

Optimize Energy Use

In order to increase energy dependence, it is important to improve the energy performance of the existing building. Since most newly constructed sustainable buildings currently operate under the net-zero rule, our dependence on fossil fuel-derived energy has been significantly reduced.

3.

Optimize Building Space And Material Use

Sustainable building design aims to operate in a way that could allow us to use and reuse materials most productively and sustainably. The natural resources are limited, it is important to conserve it to be used for years and centuries to come. With the increasing population around the globe, the demand for natural resources and its use grows too.

Sustainable building constructions must consider certain things like reducing the amount of waste generated by buildings and further pursue methods of reusing the materials.

Covering every corner of space is a skill of the designer, it is the job of sustainable design firms to optimize building space adequately.

4.

Optimize Site Potential

The location plays a major role along with the landscaping and orientation of the site. It will all affect the local ecosystems, transportation methods and usage of energy. Thus, site selection has to be the primary consideration while executing a green construction project.

Whether designing a new building or renovating an existing building, ensure that the chosen site must integrate with sustainable design.

5.

Optimize Operational And Maintenance Practices

Streamlining and simplifying maintenance requirements by specifying materials and systems becomes helpful here. Designers are pros at doing so, they can specify the materials that require less water, energy, toxic chemicals and cleaners to maintain. Such optimized operational and maintenance practices are not just cost-effective but they also reduce costs throughout the asset lifecycle.

6.

Improve Indoor Environmental Quality

It is necessary to consider the IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality) of a building while constructing. The indoor environmental quality has a remarkable effect on occupant's health, comfort and productivity. Sustainable buildings enable the houses to make use of natural resources over man-made resources, like the maximized amount of natural daylight which saves a lot on the power costs and additionally will have positive psychological effects of sunlight. The sustainable buildings also provide appropriate ventilation and moisture control. And it further optimizes acoustic performance and cuts down the use of materials with high-VOC emissions.

7.

Eliminate waste

The sustainable design firms aim to utilize the full lifecycle of all products and processes to eliminate all aspects of waste. With wastewater management, it must be attempted to collect and harvest rainwater and focus on using renewable energy sources alongside conserving water.

Summary:CSV Architects is an Ottawa based architectural practice focusing on sustainable building designs. We are committed to sustainable designing, lowering emissions, conserving energy, and other resources, and being cost-effecting in the process. We encourage sustainable building practices wherever possible. Contact us to get more information and other workrelated queries.