Architecture, Sustainable

While architecture is often seen culturally as a design-based activity that results in the production of a visually and aesthetically pleasing built environment, the design of sustainable buildings requires an approach that is informed by a knowledge of emergent technologies available to achieve this, as well as a sound grasp of the applied field of “building science.” Practitioners apply these principles in the design of buildings, and architectural technologists inform their work with a functional understanding of the technologies that can be used to reduce a building's energy and materials input demand. Grounding science and technology communication in this way helps to make it relevant, demonstrating to an audience that what may appear to be abstract concepts can be put to use in everyday contexts.

A range of examples of how science can be communicated through the medium of sustainable architecture is available, including the idea of passive solar design, the concept of embodied carbon, the use of products that rely on natural energy flows, the implications of various forms of plastic, alternative building materials, insulation, and the exploration of alternative energy technologies.

The idea of passive solar design is informed through a knowledge of the geometry of the earth– sun relationship and through an understanding of the angle of incident solar radiation striking any point on the earth's surface—and also how this changes both daily and seasonally. Some designs for sustainable buildings will rely on thermal mass systems to store heat energy to even out temperature variations over the course of a day—or even, in some applications, seasonally. Exploration of such buildings can be used as a platform for communicating key thermodynamic concepts and for communicating ideas about how different materials possess specific heat capacities. In addition, a new class of building materials referred to as “phase change materials” can be used to store thermal energy; exploring the properties of these materials can be used as a catalyst to discuss states of matter and how materials change state as heat is applied.

The concept of embodied carbon is crucial to understanding how society can adapt the design of buildings so that builders use different materials in [Page 57]construction that have required less energy in their manufacture and result in a product with a decreased carbon intensity. Underpinning these relatively new terms, which have only entered the vocabulary in the latter part of the 20th century, is a sound knowledge of energy transformation processes and efficiency. If the efficiency of energy transformation processes at each step can be accounted for, and the carbon emissions for burning a given unit of fuel is known, then it is possible to calculate how much carbon is emitted in the production of a given quantity of a certain material.

In addition, it is possible to contrast materials that harness natural energy flows with others. For example, an exploration of timber and natural products can be used as a main theme from which can branch such diverse subjects as photosynthesis, plant cell biology, and cellulose fibers; this exploration can also be used to discuss what gives these products structural strength with respect to man-made products that are used in buildings. By way of contrast, the increased use of plastics as facade and finish materials can be used to explore a rich vein of issues associated with petrochemistry, following the development of plastics use in buildings from its humble origins through realization of plastics' ultimate unsustainability to more modern solutions to the problem, such as bioplastics, which afford the utility of modern plastics plus the benefit that they are derived from natural products.

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