Lecture notes
Department of Architecture, Cornell University
ARCH 2614/5614 Building Technology I: Materials and Methods
Jonathan Ochshorn
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Sustainability: an introduction
Issues
- reducing consumption of non-renewable energy
- pollution/ land fill
- reducing consumption of non-renewable resources (other than energy)
- indoor air quality (sometimes linked to general well-being or productivity)
- global warming/ ozone depletion/ acid rain
Symptoms
- sprawl
- loss of agricultural lands/ forests
- sick building syndrome
- pollution, etc.
- One list includes the following: climate change, ozone depletion, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation, acidification, loss of biodiversity, pollution (land, water, air); toxicity, depletion of fisheries.
Solutions
- energy-efficient strategies
- renewable energy sources
- VOC-free materials
- CFC-free mechanical equipment
- Conseil International du Batiment (CIB) makes this list in 1994:
- REDUCE: reduce resource consumption
- REUSE: reuse resources
- RECYCLE: use recyclable resources
- NATURE: protect nature
- TOXICS: eliminate toxics
- ECONOMICS: apply life-cycle costing
- QUALITY: focus on quality
- The World Business Council of Sustainable Development (WBCSD) makes their own list in 1992:
- reduce material requirements of goods and services
- reduce energy inside goods and services
- reduce toxic dispersion
- make recycling easier
- use renewable resources as much as possible
- extend product durability
- increase "service intensity" of goods and services (?)
Strategies
- life-cycle analysis
- certification programs (LEED; Green Globes, etc.)
- recycling, reusing existing infrastructure
- hundreds of small strategies, like using compact fluorescent light bulbs, or providing bike storage and showers at work, etc.
Critique
- Competition among nations, states, cities, corporations results from drive to accumulate wealth as private property and, for businesses, to maximize profit; this invariably trumps the "ideals" of sustainability or well-being, etc, except where the objectives happen to coincide (as, for example, in some aspects of energy efficiency) or where the system as a whole is threatened (and state intervention becomes necessary).
LEED overview
- "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" is a program of USGBC — US Green Building Council
- 100 points in 5 major categories plus 10 more for "innovation and design process" and "regional priorities." The big 5 are:
- sustainable sites
- water efficiency
- energy and atmosphere
- materials and resources
- indoor environmental quality
- 40 points gets you certified; 50 gets you a silver rating; 60 for gold; 80 for platinum. See LEED information for details; see LEED critique for credit-by-credit summaries and commentary.
Other concepts
- Ecological rucksack refers to the number of units of mass of material that must be moved to produce one unit of the material in question: for example, making 1 pound of aluminum from bauxite requires moving 85 pounds of stuff; whereas only 4 pounds of stuff are needed to make 1 pound of recycled aluminum. At the extreme, a diamond has a "rucksack" factor of 53,000,000.
- Embodied energy refers to the energy consumed by all of the processes associated with the production of a building, from the mining and processing of natural resources to manufacturing, transport and product delivery (definition source). Using units of Megajoules per kilogram of material, here are some examples:
- polystyrene insulation = 117.0
- aluminum = 227
- aggregate = 0.1
- lumber = 2.5
- brick = 2.5
Milstein Hall
Cornell features an image of Milstein Hall's "green" roof at its newly-opened Martin Y. Tang Welcome Center in Noyes Lodge on North Campus (photo by J. Ochshorn, March 19, 2019): score 1 point for public relations, 0 points for reality.
A transcribed report on Milstein Hall's sustainable attributes, based on its LEED Gold certification, can be found here.
Disclaimer: Students are responsible for material presented in class, and required material described on course outline. These notes are provided as a tentative outline of material intended to be presented in lectures only; they may not cover all material, and they may contain information not actually presented. Notes may be updated each year, and may or may not apply to non-current versions of course.
first posted Sept. 18, 2012 | last updated: Sept. 20, 2020
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