The Importance of Understanding The Material Metabolism of The Built Environment
Construction materials are a crucial part of our built environment,but whilst the energy use of buildings is often discussed,rarely is their material consumption.Furthermore,with increasing populations and urbanisation,demand for these materials continues to increase,and in turn,so will the embodied environmental impacts created from the extraction,processing,transport and maintenance of these materials.Shorter building lifetimes are also becoming more prevalent,in part due to densification in urban areas.This creates both wasted materials and embodied impacts.A suggested greenhouse gas mitigation strategy is therefore to extend the lifetime of materials/components,e.g.through reuse,in order to displace the need for new materials and their associated impacts.However,this calls for a new way of thinking about the built environment,it becomes a system of stocks and flows,where the output flows should be redirected into inputs.However,this requires a much greater understanding of this system,which is in essence the material metabolism of the built environment.To date,research in this area has largely focused on single buildings,and techniques such as design for deconstruction and reuse that seek to improve the availability of reused materials,this could be thought of as a circular economic approach.However,for a true assessment of circular economic potential,a single building is not sufficient,as it provides a limited feedstock for future buildings.To capture the full extent of flow interactions,a wider system should be investigated - that of a neighbourhood/city-enabling better identification of the interdependencies that exist and potential synergies to be made between these flows,across multiple scales.This paper presents the background literature and an initial scoping exercise of such an assessment,focusing on a neighbourhood in Sheffield,England.
circular economy material metabolism embodied energy
Danielle DENSLEY TINGLEY Hadi ARBABI Michael DURKIN
The University of Sheffield,United Kingdom
国际会议
2017世界可持续建筑环境大会(the World Sustainable Built Environment Conference)
香港
英文
888-894
2017-06-05（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）