Natural building

Abstract: Bamboo is a natural building material that can be found in the tropical to mild temperate regions. It has been used from ancient times for its natural strength and flexibility. The renewed interest...

Abstract: Due to urbanization, most people want to live in a sophisticated ambiance in this modern age. Consequently, they have ready to spend massive investment on improving their buildings’ inside condition by fixing costly accessories like air cooler, lightings, ventilators, ducts, etc. Due to this, the building’s energy consumption increases, leading us to survive in an artificial environment. While continuously living in this synthetic condition has created serious ill-effects to human beings both physically and mentally. The inner ambiance of a building is decided mainly by the thermal transmittance controlled by the wall materials such as bricks and blocks. In the olden days, it has been practiced by the vernacular method of construction for making bricks by using natural building materials which provide a pleasant living ambiance to the humans. Many such buildings are standing for a long duration and still mounted as examples in front of us. But in the present scenario, the need for rapid infrastructure growth and lack of skilled labor to utilize those vernacular materials in modern construction gets diminished. In this age of technology development, the people​ again decided to lessen energy consumption in their buildings by promoting the concept of construction of low energy buildings using energy-efficient matters, especially in wall materials. In this paper, a comprehensive review was made on the thermal insulation effect of various entrenched materials. Its efficiency and method of assessing the property are used to manufacture the building wall bricks and blocks that control heat transfer between inside and outside the building.

Abstract: Vernacular building materials and models represent the construction methods and building materials used in a healthy manner. Local building materials such as gravel, sand, stone, and clay are used in their natural state or with minor processing and cleaning to mainly satisfy local household needs (production of concrete, mortar, ballast, silicate, and clay bricks and other products). In hot climates, the concept of natural building materials was used in a form that can currently be applied in different kinds of buildings. This concept depends on the proper consideration of the climate characteristics of the construction area. A material passport is a qualitative and quantitative documentation of the material composition of a building, displaying materials embedded in buildings as well as showing their recycling potential and environmental impact. This study will consider two usages of building materials. The first is the traditional use of building materials and their importance in the application of vernacular building strategies as an essential global bioclimatic method in sustainable architecture. The second is the affordable use of new building materials for their availability and utilization by a large part of society in a way to add more detail to research. The article aims to create an objective reading and analysis regarding specific building materials in order to generate a competent solution of materials that is suitable for building requirements in hot climates. This study evaluates the most suitable Building Material Passports needed in hot climates, where the environmental profile must be analyzed to confirm the use of natural materials.

Abstract: The evaluation of the overall performance of a green building is complex, since many construction, energy and environmental aspects have to be considered. The Umbria Region in Italy, through various public tenders, recently funded several residential buildings, innovative in terms of construction quality, green technologies and sustainable solutions, such as natural building materials, integrated sunspaces, PV (photovoltaic) modules and solar collectors, geothermal heat pumps, that had to be adopted to obtain the public contribution. The University of Perugia carried out an extended monitoring of these buildings, in order to verify the actual achievement of design objectives, to certify the real savings in terms of energy and environmental loads and to assess the indoor comfort conditions for occupants. In situ thermal, acoustical and lighting measurements were carried out for more than one year. Energy simulations were performed by means of codes which implement the algorithms required by the Italian Law. Moreover, a comparison between real consumptions and simulated energy requirements was carried out. Finally, the buildings were characterized from the environmental sustainability point of view, using the method adopted by the Umbria Region. This assessment was borrowed from ITACA (Institute for Innovation and Transparency in Government Procurement and Environmental Compatibility) procedure [an Italian procedure similar to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)] and consists of 20 worksheets, one for each different performance indicator, at the aim of carefully describing the environmental quality of the building.