Sustainable Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Sustainable Design - Essay ExampleIt is first unusual that, as Yeang, p. 413, 2007, puts it concisely - Nature regards humans as one of its many species. What differentiates humans is their capability to inflict devastating changes on the environment.3 One of the major human activities that hugely and adversely affect the environment is the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy for other down line human activities. It is now famed that fossil fuels, even in the first parts of the 21st century, still remain the major energy source. Thus, it stands to good reason that any project that preserve run on low energy consumption is a profitable one. This is in two senses - firstly, with low consumption of fossil fuels low emission of foul gases is possible and, secondly, the low consumption of fossil fuels enables energy planners to buy more time to develop alternate sources for future consumption when it is believed that all fossil fuels on Earth will be completely exhausted. This paper, thus, is concerned entirely with one such human project - human architectural activity - that is being designed to consume low energy and produce low emissions. This is what is currently being defined as sustainable architecture. The first part the paper discusses sustainability, its definition and worldwide perceptions and the second part is a critical review about a sustainable development in London, called BedZED, as a successful example, its analysis and valuation of its various environmentally friendly features.EcodesignYeang4 defines ecodesign, which may be taken as sustainable design in this case, as a built environment that is in full integrated within its natural environment. It is taken here that the concerned built environment is the sustainable architecture that this paper is in search of. Yeang (2007), furthermore, severely cautions against misconceptions that technology alone nookie provide sustainable architecture. He states that simply putting a set of tec hnologies commonly acknowledged as green such as solar arrays, photovoltaic, biologic recycling systems, building automation systems and double-skin facades into a building faeces merit the term ecodesign. Also, if a high mark in a green-rating system can hardly be construed as satisfactory reason to call the built environment sustainable architecture(Yeang, 2007). Instead, Yeang (2007) implies that ecodesign, or sustainable architecture, can only be useable when the entire building interacts with its natural environment in such a manner that all its inputs and outputs sustain the ecosystem within which it is built without upsetting its delicate equilibrium of secure survival. In this sense Yeang (2007) believes that not only the building but all its associated activities, such as transportation, for example, must be integrated into its ecosystem where he implies