Sustainable architecture – building respecting the environment
by NicolaCima on 12 June 2020
The word sustainable is now used in everyday life in recent years, but not many know that the concept of sustainability and the attention paid to this topic have been treated since the seventies, years in which there was the development of the first ecological ideas and of green building. The term sustainable architecture has the purpose of designing and constructing buildings capable of limiting impacts on the environment.
A sustainable architecture project has as its purpose the energy efficiency, the improvement of the health, comfort and quality of the use of its inhabitants that can be achieved by integrating appropriate structures and technologies in the building. To make sustainable architecture it is necessary to integrate several factors that meet the requests of the clients and at the same time do not harm others or the environment, but which are harmoniously inserted in the place in which they are created, totally reusing space and materials.
Some examples of sustainable architecture:
One of the best known buildings also abroad is definitely the Vertical Forest, which was awarded in 2014 as the most innovative skyscraper in the world. The vegetation placed on the buildings corresponds to about two hectares of forest that help in the creation of a particular microclimate, producing humidity and oxygen and help the absorption of CO2 and fine dust.
Another example is the passive solar house in Edmonton (Canada), a zero-energy building that heats up through passive solar energy and does not have a boiler. This building has three-layered windows facing south and has the particularity of capturing the heat of the sun while the floor gives the house the warmth of the ground.
This very particular building is called Heliotrope or Casa Girasole and is located in Freiburg (Germany), was built in 1994 and was the first building in the world to produce more energy than it consumes. Its structure rotates in sync with the course of the sun to benefit as much as possible from solar contributions during the winter. In Germany there are three examples of this building.
