Are you a student looking for
help designing a more sustainable building?
There are many guides available these days on how to minimise the ecological impact of the building of a building. This website focuses on something different, something that most 'ecodesign' guides fail to into account: the occupiers.
The most significant impacts of building reside not in the materiality of the building, but in what is done in and with the building. Buildings design behaviours and even attitudes no matter what you do or think. This website therefore explains how buildings can be designed (and redesigned, since this is the only way you can get at most of the existing building stock) so that they in turn design more sustainable ways of living and working.
From this perspective, the task is not just to minimise the negative ecological impacts of a building, but to turn a building into a source of positive ecological impacts, promoting and sustaining more sustainable ways of living and working. Such a building would be a sustainment.
In the SUSTAINMENTS section of this website are explanations of what sustainments are and an archived Newsletter that gives examples of Sustainments. Our Design for Sustainability Guide is an excellent resource explaining how to implement Sustainments in yourl design process.
There are significant benefits for Change Design members, inlcuding subscription to Changes which includes low-energy Architecture & Building news.
Our critically reviewed Links section conatins links associated with Green Building. In our Publications section, you will find information about building materials.
You may also be interested in picking up the Interior Lifespans research project.
EDF's archived research associated with Sustainable Arhcitecture and Building can be explained with the following questions: 1 Will the building you are designing be sustainable in higher and lower extreme temperatures, higher and lower extreme rainfall, and higher winds? (Design for the Coming Climate) 2 To what extent will the ecological impacts of your building be increased as it is increasingly wired up for the new e-economy? (The Impacts of Information Technology).
You may wish to consider helping EDF out with its research into these and other areas of sustainment design in general, monitoring and reporting on particular areas of interest. Have a look at the Ways of Participating in the EDF section of the website.
