Industrialization,Efficiency and Social Housing:Sustainable Prefabrication for the Colombian Social and Cultural Context

This research aims to generate processes of industrialization and qualification of social housing in Colombia through prefabrication,low energy consumption and high environmental quality to reduce the current deficit and improve the quality of life in communities with fewer economic resources.Modular coordination and the use of materials with thermal behaviors,appropriate to the country’s climatic characteristics,reduce production costs,avoid waste and improve the architectural and environmental quality of social housing.Passive cooling strategies,such as controlling solar incursion and generating natural cross ventilation eliminate energy consumption and allow reaching desired standards of comfort.In a context in which traditional construction systems have still not resolved the social housing deficit in Colombia and which generate high costs for energy consumption in the search for thermal comfort,industrialized and efficient construction with high environmental quality provides solutions according to the economic,geographic,social and cultural context in Colombia.

The Challenges in Providing Affordable Housing in Nigeria and the Adequate Sustainable Approaches for Addressing Them

Despite multiple schemes implemented by various governments around the country, affordable housing remains elusive to the average Nigerian. Because the situation is comparable to that of other developing nations, it remains a key concern in these countries’ socioeconomic development. Over 52% of Nigeria’s population has been claimed to live in shanties, squatter communities, and informal settlements. This article, therefore, reviews the challenges to the provision of affordable housing in Nigeria and the Sustainable approaches to address them. The article’s findings were based on a thorough examination of the literature. The article’s findings indicated that sustainable approaches for addressing Nigeria’s affordable housing barriers may best be examined through the economic, ecological, social, institutional, and technical factors. The paper urges the present regime, investors, lawmakers, and private developers in Nigeria to implement these approaches for affordable housing provision. The findings from this article will add to the current body of knowledge by providing important information on affordable housing provision and re-directing research interest towards affordable housing in Nigeria and other developing countries.

The Benefits of Solar Energy on the Provision of Sustainable Affordable Housing in Nigeria

Solar energy is the most abundant form of energy on Earth. Solar energy brings impactful benefits and products that are expected to make homes more reliable, sustainable, and affordable. Thanks to technological advancements like the solar cell, we can gather this energy and turn it into electricity. The construction industry has an exceptional chance of benefiting from this sustainable energy. Many recognised benefits have been spelled forth in the construction industry, such as providing homes with clean energy with no trace of ozone depleting material emission. There are many people in Nigeria who are not linked to the public electric grid, and the energy sector produces and generates less than 58% of the entire amount of energy required. As stated in the Nigeria’s National Energy General Plan, the Sustainable Energy programme aims to enhance the country’s use of solar electricity. This paper focuses on the role of solar energy in the provision of sustainable affordable housing in Nigeria. It considers the description, method, and utilisation of solar energy with a focus on residential and commercial buildings.

A Triple Nexus Water-Energy-Housing (WEH) Framework Modelling towards Improved Decision-Making in Humanitarian Operations

Given the challenges facing most humanitarian operations worldwide, a change of approach is needed to ensure greater sustainability of humanitarian settlements right from the planning stage. Some studies attribute unsustainability to inadequate provision of basic resources and highlight the apparent bottlenecks that prevent access to the meaningful data needed to plan and remedy problems. Most operations have relied on an “ad hoc ism” approach, employing parallel and disconnected data processing methods, resulting in a wide range of data being collected without subsequent prioritization to optimize interconnections that could enhance performance. There have been little efforts to study the trade-offs potentially at stake. This work proposes a new framework enabling all subsystems to operate in a single system and focusing on data processing perspective. To achieve this, this paper proposes a Triple Nexus Framework as an attempt to integrate water, energy, and housing sector data derived from a specific sub-system within the overall system in the application of Model-Based Systems Engineering. Understanding the synergies between water, energy, and housing, Systems Engineering characterizes the triple nexus framework and identifies opportunities for improved decision-making in processing operational data from these sectors. Two scenarios illustrate how an integrated platform could be a gateway to access meaningful operational data in the system and a starting point for modeling integrated human settlement systems. Upon execution, the model is tested for nexus megadata processing, and the optimization simulation yielded 67% satisfactory results, demonstrating that an integrated system could improve sustainability, and that capacity building in service delivery is more than beneficial.

The Influence of Displacement to the Success of Sustainable Multi-Storey Housing Development for Low-Income Society in Urban Area： Case Study- Multi-Storey Housing in Jakarta

Multi-storey housing for low income society is a concept of redevelopment from many alternatives of housing development for slum in Jakarta. However, redevelopment directly or indirectly leads to displacement of low-income residents. The new residents would be of a higher socio-economic status than the previous occupants. For controlling this phenomenon, a study about the influence of displacement to the successful of sustainable multi-storey housing development for low-income society has been done with descriptive method, observation and literature study. The result of this study give knowledge that displacement always happened when the quality of building and environment is increase, the location of multi-storey housing is near city center and commercial area. Low income society voluntary displaced their units to middle or high income society, because they are not affordable for paying operational and maintenance costs. The government has to make regulations for controlling displacement on multi-storey housing for low-income society and for the successful of sustainable multi-storey housing development in urban area.

Design Drivers for Affordable and Sustainable Housing in Developing Countries

Current demand for housing worldwide has reached unprecedented levels due to factors such as human population growth, natural disasters and conflict. This is felt no more so than in developing countries which have experienced disproportionate levels of demand due to their innate vulnerability. Many current approaches to housing delivery in developing countries continue to utilize inappropriate construction methods and implementation procedures that are often problematic and unsustainable. As such affordability and sustainability are now vital considerations in the international development debate for housing the poor in developing countries in order to meet the long term sustainable development goals and needs of housing inhabitants. This paper utilized an extensive scoping study to examine the various facets impacting on design decision making relative to sustainable and affordable housing delivery in developing country contexts. Aspects of affordability, sustainability, design decision making, appropriate technology use, cultural awareness, as well as current barriers to affordable and sustainable construction in developing countries are examined in detail. Results highlighted the capability of indigenous knowledge, skills and materials as well as selected appropriate technology transfer and cultural awareness by foreign bodies can be utilized in innovative ways in addressing current housing needs in many developing country contexts.

Analysis of Economic and Socio-Environmental Indicators for Energy, Materials and Water Management and Proposal of Technologies and Alternatives for Sustainable Construction in Housing

The work presents technologies of materials,energy and water management that can be used for sustainable buildings,reducing costs and environmental impacts.The aim was to encourage the reduction of energy consumption,adequate water management and more sustainable material choices in new or existing buildings.For this,a diagnosis of existing technologies and alternatives was carried out in the first stage of the work.The second stage consisted of analyzing among the technologies and alternatives diagnosed from the methodology which can be applied in a fictitious case study of housing,its implementation and maintenance and viability analyzing,finally,environmental indicators,social and economic.The results showed that the best evaluated technologies/alternatives were in Energy:ventilation and natural light;in Water Management:double-action sanitary basin,flow restrictors,aerators with constant flow,and minicistern systems;and in Materials:bamboo,wood,soil-cement brick,earth,steel frame and wood frame,aggregate with ash from rice husks,aggregate with ash from sugarcane bagasse,glass,phase change materials,aggregate with residues of construction and demolition,Portland cement and cement with blast furnace slag;which can be used in the civil construction sector,and provide socio-environmental and economic benefits,encouraging new studies and its use for public/private buildings,aid in the elaboration of public policies to reduce costs and improve the quality of buildings.

Energy-saving performance investigation on sustainable architecture design of open-plan housing in temperate region

With the increasing requirement of a higher living quality and the growing awareness of energy saving, how to improve the indoor comfort level and to reduce the expenditure of energy and slow down the rate of natural resource consumption is becoming increasingly important. The theory of open-plan housing is able to provide a more flexible and adaptive space for the users and bring sustainable and economic benefit in the way of making full use of construction materials. Sustainable architecture design, as a method to respond the phenomenon, is able to low down the building＇ s energy consumption and has enormous potentials in creation of sustainable living environment and a high-quality dwelling condition. The primary aim of this research is to create a new sustainable architecture design method for occupancy by integrating openplan housing theory and application of sustainable technologies. Numerical simulation by computer program is applied in order to investigate and evaluate the possibility of this method in teruas of improving indoor comfort level and energy-saving capacity.

Multiple Institutional Dynamics of Sustainable Housing Concepts in DenmarkOn the Role of Passive Houses

One of the central challenges of sustainable transition is the changing of the buildings. This involves social, cultural,political, and regulatory dynamics. Critically using transition theory conceptualization of a world of dynamics, the paper reviews institutional theory and actor network approaches in an attempt to better account for contemporary developments in Europe, encompassing EU reforms as well as multiple competing concepts. The emergence of ＂passive houses＂ in Denmark is used as a case of transition dynamics. The concept was developed in Germany and imported into Denmark. It is a technological niche, encompassing technologies, players, improvisation, and early customers. Passive houses have entered into fierce competition with other future institutions such as LEED （Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design）, DGNB （German Sustainable Building Council）/green building council, and active houses. Passive houses were at the outset a well-developed upcoming institution with design principles, software, certification and numerous reference buildings, strong enough to be a challenger institution. They are promoted by a characteristic alliance of architects, consulting engineers, a few clients, and an architect school, whereas the other concepts exhibit their specific actor alliances. Yet passive houses experience barriers such as the reputation of being expensive and non-user friendly, and are currently surpassed by the other concepts.

Energy Efficient and Sustainable Prefabricated Housing

Buildings are society’s biggest energy consumer and CO2 emitter.In most industrialised countries 40%of the energy used in societies comes from buildings.2/3of this is used for heating and cooling.33%of CO2 emission comes from buildings.17%of fresh water consumption comes from buildings.25%of time used comes from buildings and 40~50%of row material consumptions comes from buildings.To make buildings more sustainable and energy effi cient will therefore have a dramatic impact on the world environment and on the economy.

China Housing Industry Association under the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce has now launched its Sustainable Asia-Pacific Greenland Brand

This community of townhouses in Chengdu, SichuanProvince was developed by Dalian’s Wanda Group

Mass Customization and Design for High Density Indemnificatory Housing in China

The use of computer in architectural design shouldn’t sacrifice the pursuit of a human-oriented built environment.The technological applications should be legitimated by the objectives and motivations in multiple dimensions,but not abuse its generative power against the social and cultural interests.This article is based upon our synthetic computational design research for high density indemnificatory housing in China(Fig.1),which challenges the conventional standard design for large scale social housing in the Industrial Era,and reflects our exploration for innovative,multi-disciplinary,systematic and synthetic design in the new design paradigm of computation.It also promotes to shift the privilege of cutting-edge design techniques and avant-garde concepts from the“High(end)Architecture”to the ordinary architecture during the unprecedented built-environment development in China.Architectural design should have no discrimination between the Olympic stadiums in the capital and the social housing in the subordinate developed cities,as they both need to be innovative and meaningful.The final design research outputs address sustainable transformation initiated by the residents during the whole life span of the housing.We believe that the human factor(including stakeholders,users,designers and builders)is even more important in architectural design,city planning,urban design,landscape and interior design while technology development is accelerating.Conceptualization,imagination and systemization would become significant pacemakers which perpetuate design innovation.

Efficiency for Sustainability—Smart Energy Management in Social Housing

An average energy consumption distribution in household at the worldwide level illustrates that more than three quarters of total consumption is contributed to room heating and almost 12% to water heating for all the living necessities. Although a slow fall of domestic energy consumption has occurred in the recent 20 years (from 1990 to 2011) with a regular decrease between ?1.2% and ?1.4%/year per dwelling as a result of a decrease income corresponding to the economic crisis in 2008, whereas energy prices for households has increase since 2004, the energy cost of paying especially for space heating and domestic hot water (DHW) supplying is still going up. At the EU level, the building sector including residential, commercial and other service buildings is regarded as the key to greater energy efficiency, because according to statistics the final energy consumption for building sector has taken the largest proportion about 40% until 2020, which is apparently higher than the share in transportation sector by 32% and industry sector by 24%. In the scope of the ongoing research and investigation on energy efficiency in residential fields and its impact on environment and climate, how to investigate smart energy management methods for the promotion of sustainable consumption and green living patterns has been already paid much attention, however it has to be studied further and thoroughly, especially among energy consumer groups whose energy costs have no or just little relevance or dependence on major income source, which leads to a lack of energy saving awareness by users. Energy consumers living in social housing buildings represent this kind of energy consumer group which receive the governmental relief fund as their family income in a great measure, they have different culture, educational and age backgrounds. This paper presents firstly some research results based on authors’ practical experiences on the projects about energy efficiency in social housing buildings in European countries, which is supposed to be introduced in the aspects of subjective and objective energy saving potentials. It is proposed to be able to provide valuable and referential advices exchange our experience on a sustainable development in affordable housing.

Artificiality and Naturalness:Semi-underground Houses and Their Role in the Construction of a Sustainable Urban Landscape

The contemporary interest,on one hand for a renewed relationship between city and natural landscape,on the other for settlement typologies intrinsically efficient from an energy standpoint took back the attention on the design of the dug city,or rather,almost completely excavated.This is an emblematic model of the requirement that deals with the factors of its environment,like sun,wind,ground,shadow and flora,forcing some designers to migrate from usual design methodologies,indifferent to these design parameters,and they are careful only to the“laws of form”,in search of criteria and fine calculation tools to optimize the configuration and the structure of buildings,in order to ensure that they can be managed as“passively”as possible.What it means,with the minimum contribution of plants to ensure the best satisfaction of comfort and psychological needs of users:not only lighting,sunbathing,ventilation,thermal comfort in summer and winter,acoustic comfort,but also view characteristics,quality of lighting and sociological aspects.In general dialectic between artifice and nature,the theme of dug architecture today is faced not only as one of the most interesting and rich suggestions,but also as one of those,in which the reflection on objectives,methodologies and tools is longer necessary,to the identification of a new way of urban living and effective solutions against energy consumption.

IN PRAISE OF SHARING AS A STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABLE HOUSING

A central theoretical principle of sustainability is the interdependence of economic,socio-cultural,environmental,and equity issues.The core idea is that sustainability is achieved only by balancing these elements.In practice,how­ever,this balance is rarely evidenced in the design and production of housing,despite the mass of research into sus­tainable housing.This paper discusses some of the political,economic and socio-cultural issues at work in sustainable housing typologies.It illustrates how the notion of sustainability has come to be represented by ecologically-focused models,while other approaches to sustainable housing design,such as shared housing models,are barely mentioned in the literature.The paper argues that modernist imperatives,such as demands for speed and status undermine sustainable housing design and obscure its meaning.The authors suggest that in the planning and design of sustain­able housing attention should be given to the sharing of resources and space as an added method of conservation,and conclude that current imbalances in research agendas and socio-cultural practices create a blind spot in the sustain­able housing debate.

SEMI-TIERED HOUSING FOR LATERITE EARTH SLOPING LANDS-A SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION WITH ALTERNATIVE MATERIALS AND METHODS

Increased demand for affordable housing and the limited availability of flat terrain for its construction are two major problems facing the provision of houses of acceptable quality in many countries around the world.There is limited research integrating the utilization of a stepped approach to sloping terrain with appropriate housing models to minimize slope instability potential.This paper introduces a new semi-tiered housing model where the footprint of the house is located on tiers prepared with short vertical cuts of 1.5-2m.Such vertical cuts are found to be stable with laterite soil which is a commonly available type of soil in the tropics.The excess soil generated from cut material was transformed into cement stabilized rammed earth,which is a cost effective material with low embodied energy.This is an ideal candidate for the construction of retaining walls and foundations,and such applications are demonstrated with adequate details.Further,many other types of sustainable building materials are highlighted with a case study of this housing model in a scheme of 13 housing units in Sri Lanka.The attention to detail required in construction and the applicability of alternative building materials and methods to improve the sustainability of such houses have been discussed in detail.These semi-tiered houses have the potential to address many of the current construction challenges.

A Business Case for Flexible Housing： The Feasibility of Implementing Flexibility Measures in the Housing Market

Adaptive construction is already for decades on the agenda of the construction sector. The adaptive capacity of a building includes all qualities that enable the building keeping its functionality during the technical life cycle, under altered conditions and needs [1]. Meanwhile, the interest in flexible building has increased significantly caused by the growing awareness of the need for sustainability. The Dutch construction sector is responsible for 35% of the national waste production. This number emerges from a sector that accounts for 5.1% of the gross domestic product [2]. This paper reports about a study that was executed in collaboration with a Dutch real estate developer [3]. The purpose was to develop a successful business case for a flexible row house concept that could show the market under what conditions flexibility measures for future adaptations can be implemented. One of the main conclusions affirms that a long-lasting collaboration between a developer and the investor could result in a feasible business case if the developer stays involved during the use phase of the dwellings. Through many additional interviews, this research was able to let the real estate market reflect about the business case of flexible row housing.

Issues and policies on China's sustainable human settlement

勃睮t is one of the major tasks to achieve sustainable human settlement for China's socioeconomic development within the coming century The sustainable development of human settlements is closely related to the development of the economy, the utilization of natural resources and environmental protection As a developing country China is facing a series of issues to achieve the sustainable human settlement, which should be rationally laid out with comprehensive facilities convenient for working and living, and which have clean, quiet and comfortable environments The policy of reform and opening to the outside world have accelerated national social and economic development and promoted urban development in China The rural population is continuously flowing into the cities and towns in increasing numbers Therefore, it is necessary not only to continue to improve the housing standards for the current urban population, but also to meet the needs of the newcomers The movement of great numbers of people and the increased circulation off goods and materials, combined with an increase in the number of motor vehicles, has meant that traffic problems are becoming a major issue in the development of human settlements The infrastructure is under pressures from the growth in urban population and from rising production and living standards The shortage of natural resources is another challenge to be faced in developing human settlements in China A low technological level and the improper use of resources has aggravated the severity of the problem In cities, the amount of land currently being used for industrial purposes is relatively high as compared with other land uses Approximately 70 percent of industries are located in the cities and in many areas, factories and housing are intermixed, a major factor affecting the environment of urban residential areas The taking up of arable land by the village and township enterprises is another serious problem Settlements in towns and villages are also under the threat from various types of environmental pollution This paper is trying to summarise and identify the major issues, to promote the possible polices and strategies, and to argue the requirements and activities of sciences and technology for achieving China's sustainable human settlement

Prospects of Low Cost Housing in India

The paper presents work on low-cost and sustainable alternative building materials having advantages on areas such as India where concrete or steel housing is expensive. The project addresses the challenges and stereotypes of using these materials as a structural component for low-cost housing and their same capacity for adaptation to the broad spectrum of factors—physical, ecological, social, economic and technical—through different products developed which can dictate the production of the construction environment.

Green Affordable Social Housing: A Survey-Based Passive Cooling Design, with Focus on Jakande Housing Estate in Lagos, Nigeria

With rising health risks escalating from temperatures in the Global South, the shortage of essential indoor cooling is frequently seen as a dimension of energy poverty and human wellbeing. As a result, this study assessed ventilation and passive cooling in Jakande, Lagos Housing estate to design social housing that integrates proper cross ventilation and cooling. A total of 1215 housing units in the estate were used for the sampling frame. Based on the survey, the authors proposed an analytical housing design equipped with urban greenery that allows for free air movement with minimal thermal discomfort. The design methodology aids continuous cooling within the housing envelope and also improves aesthetics and landscaping within the environment.