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Concepts in Sustainable Development (The Impact of Contemporary Architectural Designs on Sustainable Installations)
2022-11-01
Assistant Instructor Saif Sa’ad Mansoor
The Upper Euphrates Basin Developing Centre
University of Anbar
The term sustainability has emerged in the past thirty years as an important science to meet the challenges that arise from dealing between nature and humans, and the word sustainability has become circulating in many fields and is associated with other clues such as development, construction, energy and others. Sustainability is defined as the preservation of the quality of life through adaptation to the environment by exploiting natural resources for the longest possible period of time that leads to the maintenance of the continuity of life, and also defines it: as a set of vital processes that provide the means of life for living organisms of various kinds, helping them to maintain the succession of their generations and develop their means of growth over time.
Chapter 40 of the Twenty-first Century Agenda of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio included improving the quality and availability of sustainability data for decision-making and unleashing the need for relevant and credible data to measure sustainability in order to progress towards sustainability. The newly proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York in 2015 included promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth as well as achieving well-being for all. Our article will answer the following questions:
- How is the design sustainable?
- What is a sustainable lifestyle?
- What does an environmental footprint mean?
- What is the significance of it?
The quest to live in a decent, comfortable and orderly way of life in this age is an aspiration of every individual and at the same time represents a major concern, because every aspect of human development depends to a large extent on the interaction between the elements of sustainability (social, economic and environmental) as shown in Figure (1) and these interactions often lead to noticeable effects on the ecosystem leading to negative effects that we face today in the field of water, air, energy and land, which have imposed real pressures on the need to move towards sustainability, From them emerged the real trend of searching for solutions in all fields from design through implementation to the end of use and optimal living. The environmental footprint can be used to calculate the consumption pattern of a particular country, city, community or individual.
Figure 1 shows the elements of sustainability and the interaction spaces between them
Important topics:
- Sustainable design: or (what is known as environmentally conscious design) which is a way to design buildings and services in line with the rules of sustainability (economic, environmental and social) and the goal of sustainable design is to reduce or completely eliminate the negative environmental impact through smart and accurate design and to achieve this type of design we need renewable resources whose impact on the environment is as little as possible and at the same time connects man to the natural environment and meets his needs and here lies a great duty on designer engineers to think about the principles of sustainable design To provide buildings with the lowest cost and have maximum durability and quality and provide comfort and optimal use for people, so that the origin has achieved an actual balance between economy and long life and in line with environmental and social requirements.
Principles of sustainable design:
There are many rules and standards for sustainable design in order to achieve sustainable construction, and on all fields (education and government institutions, industry and environment) we will summarize the three most important of them:
- Sustainable construction: Sustainable construction refers to design and construction processes that take into account economic, environmental and social impacts. It includes several elements such as materials, water, energy, transportation, infrastructure and waste management. There are a lot of materials that can be used to build infrastructure, the most widespread of which are building stones, wood, asphalt, cement, iron and composite materials, and we will illustrate as an example the materials used.
- Materials used: Materials produced in a sustainable or recycled way that require little energy during processing and are non-toxic materials, are selected and it is very important to know the properties of materials and their components and discover their environmental aspects to employ them correctly.
- Sustainable Buildings: are units built using sustainable methods and materials and facilitate green practices for a more sustainable lifestyle. Its construction and maintenance has natural effects on the ground, and is usually close to basic services such as schools, mosques, food shops, day care centres, work and public transport, which makes sustainable life options possible and to illustrate sustainable buildings we take the example of houses:
- Sustainable homes: They are usually designed to minimize the negative impact on the ecosystem by, inter alia, going to the sun to provide the best possible climate (usually the longer side of the house or building should be directed between east and west), providing wind barriers and a natural shading process. Sustainable shelter design also enables options such as the use of solar lighting and heating, taking into account thermal and sound insulation and everything that helps create favourable climates. Sustainable homes include environmentally friendly management of surplus building materials for recycling and the use of non-toxic, renewable, recycled and reclaimed materials, manure and low-impact production materials (such as the use of organic or water-based decorations). The use of available local materials and tools as much as possible is aimed at reducing the consumption of resources.
- Sustainable living: it is a way of life that seeks to reduce the use of natural resources by the individual and society where sustainable living practitioners contribute to reducing carbon emissions by changing the methods of energy consumption, transportation and diet, and this practice and philosophy of clean environmental life is highly interconnected with all the principles of sustainable development. Environmental scientist and founder of the World Watch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute Lester Brown describe sustainable living in the twenty-first century as "the shift to renewable energy and the reuse or recycling of the economy with diverse transport systems."
- Environmental footprint: It is an indicator to measure the impact of the consumption of natural resources by a particular group on Earth with the ability of the Earth to replenish these resources. The Environmental Footprint Index shows us the level of sustainability of the lifestyle of the inhabitants of the selected country and the extent of their impact and harm on the planet. To calculate the ecological footprint, we need to compare the rate of demand for natural resources, which is (the environmental footprint), with the stock of natural resources, which is (biological capacity).
Example: Every two years, the World Wide Fund for Nature publishes the Living Planet Report. A 2008 report showed that the UAE's footprint is 9.5 global hectares per capita, indicating that UAE residents consume food, fibre, energy, and various goods and services at a rate that exceeds the planet's ability to provide those resources naturally. Comparing the country's environmental footprint of 9.5 global hectares with the global biological capacity of 2.1 global hectares, we conclude that we will need four and a half planets to provide demand for resources.
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