The topic of this proposal that I will be looking into is Sustainable Buildings. The utmost importance of human survival on Earth is shelter. According to Trayer (2014) as quoted, “ Without a shelter of some kind we are leaving ourselves very vulnerable to mother nature.” Without shelter, we are exposed to weather and temperature that can led to our survival. If there is no shelter for man, we cannot keep ourselves warm during winter times thus causing hypothermia and eventually leads to death. Over the years, as human population are increasing, that means there are more and more houses to be built to shelter everyone. Therefore, more resources have to be used to build houses. As we know today, because of humans, the environment is suffering from pollution that caused by us. As quoted by Nelson (2016), “In the past 200 years, since the Industrial Revolution, the increased burning of fossil fuels has released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The concentration of CO2 has risen about 25 percent in the past two centuries from 280 parts per million to just over 400 parts per million.” If this continues, the Earth will become warmer and to ease us, we have to burn more energy to provide electric to cool our houses and workspace, thus doing more damage. There have been acres and acres of woodlands being destroyed just to use their abundance of raw materials like wood to make houses for us. To build a new house, there will debris from construction projects and
Figure 1 homes which was demolished from previous projects, in the end discarding it in our landfills and left to deteriorate for thousands of years, thus, causing large amount of waste in our planet. This will not only currently affect us, it will also affect our children’s children and making the Earth a wasteland for them. We have to change our attitude towards the environment, as building houses is one of the main contributor of this. Almost all the houses around the world would have traces of wood, this is because wood is durable, structurally strong and also a natural insulator. Therefore, the demand for wood increases, countries like Malaysia, which have an abundance of hard wood will have to cut their trees and selling it to countries like Japan, China, EU, South Korea and etc, thus destroying the environment because the government is not doing enough to replant the forest. To stop this destruction, Architects will have to find a substitution for hard wood; like bamboo, reusing materials from old buildings that have been demolished. As our technology is advancing every year, we can take advantage of renewable resources from Mother Nature and use it to produce energy like electric. There are many countries like United States, France, United Kingdom, China. etc are starting to use renewable energy to produce electricity by using solar panels. Company like Tesla is trying to reinvent how we can use roof tiles to make it into tiny solar panels in each of them. By adapting into this technology, we can decrease the amount of greenhouse gases produced and deforestation.
Figure 2
Figure 1: Malaysia Timber Exports, From: http://www.globaltimber.org.uk/malaysia.htm
Date: 31/5/2017
Figure 2: Tesla Solar Panel Roof Tiles, From: http://www.upsbatterycenter.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Choose-Your-Style.png
Date: 31/5/2017
Territory, or Autonomous Environment
The importance of a living thing and its environment is a complex concept of a circulatory exchange. The thing living in the environment have to co-exist between each other. In modern times, the environment are sometimes being overlooked by some people, for example, cutting down trees for timber and not replanting them causes stress towards the environment. There is a concept called the Heideggerian concept, according to Dreyfus (1991), Martin Heidegger, he “was interested on how can we raise the issue of Being, that is, to make sense of our capacity to make sense of things”. To Heidegger, the utmost importance issue was to rekindle the notion. However, according to Gissen (2009), “unlike a Heideggerian concept of thing and world, these geographers do not believe that systems of production bear witness to one authentic reality”, meaning that, the building revealing the site. By acknowledging the idea, Gissen (2009) stated that, “as for space itself, it poses both a complex and problematic category.” We have to choose on how we use materials as it can impact the environment. By choosing materials and bringing up innovative design can help improve the impact and to co-exist with our environment.
Sustainable Buildings
Firstly, the definition of sustainable buildings according to Environmental Protection Agency (2016) in the US stated that “is the practice of creating and using healthier and more resource efficient models of construction, renovation, operation, maintenance and demolition.” In this century, architects are trying to design their own or their clients buildings to be as sustainable as possible. As, it can help the environment and also help keeps the cost of running the buildings low.
Sustainable Buildings like The Crystal in London, United Kingdom is one of the most sustainable buildings ever built. The Crystal a futuristic looking building was opened by Siemens a German manufacturing and engineering giant. According to Kennett (2013) he wrote that Pedro Miranda whom is the head of the Global Centre of Competence Cities at Siemens said, as quoted “It was designed and built to be one of the most sustainable buildings in the world with highest BREEAM and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification”. The massive structure, 6.300 metre square to be precise, Kennett (2013) stated that they claim to have consume 50% less power and emit 65% less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared to industrial office buildings.