FEATURE: RESILIENT BUILDING DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION

FEATURE: RESILIENT BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

BUILDINGS ACCOUNT FOR AROUND 40 PER CENT OF ENERGY RELATED GLOBAL CARBON EMISSIONS. WITH OVER 42.2 BILLION TONNES OF MATERIALS CONSUMED ANNUALLY, IT IS LITTLE SURPRISE THAT BUILDINGS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AROUND 50 PER CENT OF GLOBAL MATERIAL USE.

And the demand for building materials is only growing. For instance, average world steel use per capita has steadily increased from 150kg in 2001 to 224.5kg in 2018. By 2050, worldsteel predicts that steel production will grow by 30 per cent to help meet the needs of the world’s growing populations.

With a rising need to address climate change and raw material depletion, there is growing demand for both sustainable and resilient building design and construction. Industry and consumers alike are placing a greater emphasis on building materials that are easily recyclable and re-usable, and that perform not only for the lifecycle of a building, but beyond.

This type of approach encompasses the use of lighter and high-performance materials that are easier to install and maximise internal spaces—materials like steel. Producing steel is energy intensive. However, once produced, steel is 100 per cent recyclable, and can be infinitely recycled without any loss of quality. With a global recovery rate of more than 70 per cent, steel is the most recycled material on the planet. Being magnetic, steel is easy and affordable to recover from almost any waste stream.

Steel has a number of green virtues for construction too. The decision to use steel has benefits right from the initial stages of a project. Its great strength to weight ratio produces a lighter structure that minimises foundation work and the excavation and earthworks involved.

As building proceeds, steel can be fabricated offsite in a factory and delivered to site as required. This means that the components can be fabricated with great accuracy and be assembled onsite with minimum labour and truck movements. Moreover there is virtually no waste to be disposed of, solving a major logistic and environmental problem on most construction sites.

Using steel in the design of a building allows larger column-free areas to be created, making better use of natural light to save energy. As buildings age they often have to undergo radical modification to meet changing circumstances and in this event a steel structure is much easier and quicker to modify and get back in use, using much less energy and creating much less waste as any redundant steel has immediate scrap value for recycling.

Ongoing research is producing new steels that are even stronger and lighter than those available today. These new steels offer myriad benefits. With their higher strength-to-weight ratio, the newer steels can be used to manufacture tower sections of up to 30m. This reduces emissions during transport and assembly.

Higher grade steels are also being developed for construction. They enable the construction of larger and taller buildings in a more efficient way and produce the lowest possible amount of waste. The use of higher grade steels is expected to reduce the quantity of steel used in construction.

Transportation costs are reduced thanks to the thinner, and therefore lighter, steel components. They shorten the time needed for processing at plants and on-site construction, largely due to a reduction in the number of welds required.

Australia is home to some of the world's leading research in the area of resilient building design and construction. There is the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre at the University of Wollongong (page 34): a multi-disciplinary facility designed to address the challenge of transforming our buildings and built environment into sustainable, resilient and effective places for people to live and work.

In Fremantle, a new way of thinking about where we live and work is on display: The Legacy Living Lab, also known as L3 (page 44). Curtin University's L3 is a modular building designed using principles of the circular economy – an environmentally friendly economic concept that aims to design out waste by including as much recycling and re-use of materials as possible.

The private sector is also responsible for the development of leading edge construction systems, designed to bolster both sustainability and resilience. Bondor's InsulLiving® building system is Australia’s next step towards zero energy housing (page 41).

Quicker, leaner, smarter and greener, InsulLiving® delivers a new Codemarked building system for ecofriendly and energy efficient homes that can keep Australian families comfortable all year round.

It works through the combination of insulated walling and roofing panels, which act as a complete thermal barrier and structural shell. This barrier reduces air-leakage found in traditional built homes, which contributes to rising heating and cooling energy bills.

RESILIENT DESIGN PRINCIPLES

While definitions vary, resilient building design principles generally encompass: • Strategies to address resilience apply at scales of individual buildings, communities, and larger regional and ecosystem scales; they also apply at different time scales—from immediate to long-term. • Resilient systems provide for basic human needs, including potable water, sanitation, energy, livable conditions, lighting, safe air, occupant health, and food. • Diverse and redundant systems are inherently more resilient. More diverse communities, ecosystems, economies, and social systems are better able to respond to interruptions or change, making them inherently more resilient. While sometimes in conflict with efficiency and green building priorities, redundant systems for such needs as electricity, water, and transportation, improve resilience.

• Simple, passive, and flexible systems are more resilient. Passive or manual-override systems are more resilient than complex solutions that can break down and require ongoing maintenance.

Flexible solutions are able to adapt to changing conditions both in the short and long-term. • Strategies that increase durability enhance resilience. Durability involves not only building practices, but also building design (beautiful buildings will be maintained and last longer), infrastructure, and ecosystems. • Reliance on abundant local resources, such as solar energy, annually replenished groundwater, and local food provides greater resilience than dependence on nonrenewable resources or resources from far away. • Resilience anticipates interruptions and a dynamic future. Adaptation to a changing climate with higher temperatures, more intense storms, sea level rise, flooding, drought, and wildfire is a growing necessity, while non-climate-related natural disasters, such as earthquakes and solar flares, and anthropogenic actions like terrorism and cyberterrorism, also call for resilient design. Responding to change is an opportunity for a wide range of system improvements. • Natural systems have evolved to achieve resilience; resilience can be enhanced by relying on and applying lessons from nature.

Strategies that protect the natural environment enhance resilience for all living systems. • Strong, culturally diverse communities in which people know, respect, and care for each other fare better during times of stress or disturbance. Social aspects of resilience can be as important as physical responses. • Resilience is not absolute.

Incremental steps can be taken and that total resilience in the face of all situations is not possible.

Implement what is feasible in the short term and work to achieve greater resilience in stages.

Source: The Resilient Design Institute (resilientdesign.org)