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Our current way of life demands an unstoppable, increasing industrial activity and this is affecting our environment in a negative way. The different industrial sectors and, in particular, the construction sector, are partly to blame. Architectural activities are responsible for almost half of the energy consumed in Europe as well as for most of the residues and emissions.
Luckily, architecture is renewing its views in order to adapt, progressively, to the new needs and demands of the society, which are mainly focussed on respecting and adapting to the environment. This is why a new concept has turned up, namely “sustainable architecture”.
Sustainable architecture, also known as Green architecture, is based upon the urge to meet the current needs without damaging the environment and without jeopardizing the future of the generations to come.
This type of architecture must assess the environmental impact of the different building construction phases, from construction materials - which should not be obtained by using up too many energetic resources and which should be non-polluting - to the construction techniques, which should not damage the environment. Sustainable architecture also takes into account the features of the building, its situation, its adaptation to the environment, its energy consumption and the capacity to recycle the residues resulting from its demolition, which should not involve high recycling costs.
Infoglass wants to contribute to this type of architecture and therefore introduces this new section, which presents the personal view on sustainable architecture of Luis de Garrido.
Vitro, being a firm that is concerned with the environment, has collaborated in sustainable architecture projects, such as VitroHouse and R4House, both of them carried out by the aforementioned architect.
Luis de Garrido, PhD Architect, is one of the most outstanding persons in the area of sustainable architecture. It is 13 years now that he only takes up commissions in which the ecologic, health and environmental criteria are rigorously observed.
For Luis de Garrido, achieving a veritably sustainable architecture is a process that involves a series of steps:
Sustainable indicators play an essential role and they must be evaluated in such a way that they may be easily identified and they must also be very general. The indicators should not overlap and they must yield the basic pillars of sustainable architecture, which are five on the whole:
The indicators are the guidelines that must be followed in order to achieve the implementation of the pillars. For Luis de Garrido, there are 37 sustainable indicators, although they do not have the same relative value. Some of them are highly beneficial for the environment, while some others involve more moderate benefits. The most important indicator is bioclimatic design, for, if this indicator is met, an energy saving of more than 90% can be achieved.
Some indicators can be incompatible with others, since achieving one of them could impair the integral achievement of the others, and thus, priorities should be established concerning the most efficient indicators in each case, because each circumstance is a unique circumstance and it may change the relevance of each indicator.
Indicators provide essential information about the characteristics of sustainable architecture; they provide the theory, but not the practice. Thus, it is absolutely necessary to set forth a series of actions that must be carried out. These architectural actions also bring along a certain environmental efficiency.
The economic cost of each environmental action may vary greatly and this factor must be taken into account in order to select the most adequate options for each budget from the point of view of the costs.