5 Ways Sustainable Architecture Can Help Our Planet
Written By AD&V®
ABOUT THE AUTHOR | AD&V® is dedicated to advanced and energy-efficient sustainable architecture & interior design that enhances people’s experience of the world and improves their lives.
SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE IS A POWERFUL TOOL THAT CAN BE USED TO HELP OUR PLANET.
To help create a sustainable lifestyle, architects are working to balance our need to consume natural resources with the planet’s need to conserve them.
Take a look at five ways that architecture can help our planet:
1. CARBON-NEGATIVE BUILDINGS
Carbon emissions have a massive impact on global warming. To slow down the rate of global warming, architects are implementing strategies to reduce these emissions, like designing carbon-negative buildings.
Architects have begun designing carbon-negative buildings that remove more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit over their lifetime. This includes reducing the operational carbon generated by the heat and power the buildings consume and the carbon released by the extraction, manufacturing, and transportation of construction materials.
In 2021, France built the world's first carbon-negative public building that generates enough energy during its operation to compensate for the carbon emitted over its lifetime. The building is made from hempcrete, a mixture of hemp with lime and water. Hemp is a sustainable material that can grow 100 times faster than an oak tree and captures carbon twice as effectively as a forest.
Carbon-negative buildings are a great way to reduce carbon emissions.
2. GREEN DESIGN
Green buildings are designed, built, and operated with a focus on conserving energy, sourcing eco-friendly/recycled materials, and preserving the area’s biodiversity. They often include renewable energy, adaptable commercial environments, and waste reduction methods.
Many architects are designing green buildings with integrated gardens and green areas to help remove air pollution. Plants help reduce smog and pollution by taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere.
Since green buildings are designed and executed with the environment in mind, they help improve the climate around them.
3. WATER MANAGEMENT & RECYCLING
Using potable water to irrigate lawns, wash sidewalks, or flush human waste is a misuse of this energy-intensive and scarce resource. Architecture can help reduce how much water we consume and restore natural systems.
Because large amounts of energy resources are used to procure, treat, transport, store potable water, and produce power, architects must consider the protection and conservation of water throughout the life of their designs. For example, there are already buildings and urban developments designed to collect rainwater, purify it, put it to use, and release the extra and treated water to neighboring bodies of water.
Architects can potentially replenish bodies of water and their ecosystems with the goal that their projects deliver a net positive water impact.
4. BIOMIMETIC ARCHITECTURE
Another way in which architecture can help the environment is by making use of biomimicry through biomimetic architecture. Biomimicry is the design and production of materials, structures, and systems modeled on biological entities and processes to solve human challenges sustainably. Biomimetic architecture aims to create structures that positively impact the environment.
According to architect Michael Pawlyn, biomimetic architecture can allow entire cities to stop climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere by mimicking the process of bio-mineralization, by which lifeforms such as micro-organisms in the sea turn carbon into limestone and other carbon-rich minerals.
For example, the Sahara Forest Project in Qatar is a seawater-cooled greenhouse that replicates a Namibian beetle's physiology to harvest fresh water in the desert. Any excess water it makes is used to revegetate the surrounding landscape.
Biomimetic architecture can lead to highly efficient structures that minimize the use of materials while replicating beneficial processes to improve the environment.
5. URBAN BIODIVERSITY
The need to rewild cities, where biodiversity is rapidly declining, is critical. Since the pandemic, architects across the globe have recognized the importance of providing urban habitats that can support biodiversity and realign human interests with nature.
Parks, nature centers, and other green infrastructure that are responsive to the environment can help to foster biodiversity by providing habitat for breeding, shelter, and food, for birds, pollinators, and other animals.
Architects are working to develop solutions to the global biodiversity crisis by designing cities with thriving multi-species habitats to restore biodiversity loss.
A HEALTHIER FUTURE
Sustainable architecture goes beyond design to help create a better and healthier future for all. When architects incorporate these five strategies into their designs, they help tackle today’s multiple complex environmental challenges.
Architecture that supports long-term ecological balance not only saves energy and natural resources but also increases people’s well-being.