Assignments

Homework – Sustainable Materials

This is an individual assignment. You will be required to research and summarise sustainable building practice information about ONE country, including current legislation, building practice and construction materials used. You will be asked to discuss any legislation/guidelines or standards used and their impact on improving building practice. Your final output will be a written report.

Choose a city from your native country (or one that you are familiar with), if you are from NZ, please consider an alternative from the list provided below:

China, UK, India, Australia, USA, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, France, Russia Singapore.

For the city you have chosen:

1.       Prepare a short descriptive paragraph about your chosen city (this must NOT be cut and paste from Wikipedia). Each paragraph should include details such as location, climate, population size, topography and main industry etc.

2.     Discuss how houses are built focusing on typical materials used, and whether these materials are sustainable? (for example, are the materials produced locally or transported from overseas; do they recycle their building products).

3.     Investigate if there are any existing guidelines/standards (government/non-government or both?) on how to build a sustainable building for this location. If so, what is the guideline focus (e.g. greenhouse emissions, sustainable materials, human health).  Summarise any the legislation, guidance and standards by providing the following detail:

·       Whether from government or non-government agency

·       When were these standards/guidelines created and when was the most recent version produced?

·       Is this compulsory legislation/standards or just guidelines?

·       Is there anything being done to encourage people to follow it?

·       Is there any information available about the number of buildings currently using this guidance? (this will be easy to find for LEED, NZGBC etc. but trickier for government organisations).

4.     In your opinion, are the houses adequate for the climate and geographic conditions of the city or country?

5.     Using the diagram provided as an example (Fig 1), create your own diagram to summarise how well these buildings follow sustainable strategies in your chosen country.

Figure 1: Demonstrating sustainability in buildings

Your feedback should be in the form of a short, written report (submitted to Turnitin)- no longer than 6 pages in length (including reference list for websites and relevant articles used)