Environmental Building Design: Affordable and Sustainable Housing

This report provides a comprehensive overview of environmental building design, specifically focusing on sustainable housing in residential projects. It delves into the challenges of balancing affordability with sustainability, particularly in countries like Australia. The report explores key aspects such as waste management, energy consumption, and the impact on air and water quality. It highlights the conflicts between different approaches to sustainable development and the difficulties faced by low-income groups in accessing sustainable housing. The report also discusses various strategies for achieving sustainable and affordable housing, including high-density designs, mixed-use developments, and the importance of government subsidies. It references several studies and provides insights into the complexities of creating eco-friendly and cost-effective residential projects. The conclusion emphasizes the interconnectedness of affordable housing and sustainability goals, and the need for tailored approaches based on socio-economic classes.

RUNNING HEAD: ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN
1
ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN
Student Name
Institute Name

ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN 2
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Sustainable development in housing...............................................................................................3
Challenges........................................................................................................................................3
Waste management..........................................................................................................................4
Use of energy...................................................................................................................................5
Impact on air and water...................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Reference.........................................................................................................................................7

ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN 3
Introduction
The report will discuss in detail growth in the field of saving the sustainability of medium level
of density based residential projects. Affordability in housing along with sustainable
development has been an important issue all across the world in countries like Australia.
Normally there is some kind of conflict that exists between different set of approaches based on
sustainable development in housing (Burton et al., 2013).
Sustainable development in housing
The concept of sustainable development can be defined as a city which is compact by nature and
usually impacted with development which is further associated with expensive in low-density
development of residential locations. In country like Australian, the concept of sustainability in
housing is normally been based on constructing for various high end markets. It is important to
understand here that the concept of affordable housing means small units of housing with less
costly material and in small number of block manufactured on some cheap pieces of land within
boundaries of the town (Yigitcanlar et al., 2015). There is some basic kind of aspects of as well
associated with sustainable designs like rise in the level of density which is mixed with overall
usage and is done in closeness to public based transport are being adopted by many cities of the
country. At the same time sustainability in affordable housing concepts also remains a big
question mark.
Challenges
There are number of challenged in the planning right or appropriate strategies of number of
Australian metropolitan towns that goes from desire to being affordable housing. There is also a

ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN 4
desire to accomplish the sustainable development. In normal circumstances, in the country like
Australia the concept of sustainable housing is actually is difficult to afford for less income
groups and households (Xia et al., 2015). The concept of sustainable development actually
means that the development can be very expensive process than a normal project. But there are
number of studies which proves that Australian housing market is most importantly is quite
unaffordable by nature as per the global standards with number of urban based consolidations.
The concept of sustainable housing has been based on constructing for many high end products
in the market. There are some basic or foundation based steps of sustainable residential kind of
designs like rise in the level density with mix usage and proximity with different mode of
transport. But normally, the high density areas near the town or in part of internal suburbs parts
for the needs of housing associated with upper end of the society. However, these units are quite
unaffordable for the major chunk of population. In order to accomplish sustainable housing,
there is also the constant need to provide various community based facilities with compact
designs and eco-friendly housing (Hwang et al., 2017). There are number of elements that are
quite common in both affordable as well as sustainable housing. Thus it is also possible to make
sustainability based affordable housing by providing due credit to many design based parameters
and which also consist of society in the present design process and further provide the
government with different kind of subsidies to accomplish efficient housing. There is some
amount of extra cost that may go in the trade off by decreasing the size of the house and also
going for major decrease in constant cost of energy along with water usage (Nelson, 2016).
Waste management
The overall process of construction along with renovation of the building ends up at large
amount of waste. The waste from the building usually consists of metals, plastics, wood,

ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN 5
concrete, and many more. The waste is usually disposed of in number of places like landfills and
other. This can result in polluting the land, air and the transportation needed to remove these
waste also make an important influence on the environment (Weingaertner and Moberg, 2014).
Use of energy
As per number of research, construction of a building takes up around forty one percent of the
world’s energy. The whole sector accounts for around thirty percent and transportation cost goes
up till twenty nine percent. This happens partially due to the large amount of electricity that
builds and uses it. In number of developed countries like US and Australia, construction of the
building is accountable for seventy three percent of electricity of the total consumption. The
question what is possibly consuming this much of energy (Roberts et al., 2016). There are so
many things from the building’s lighting system to heating and cooling systems.
Impact on air and water
There are number of constructions of building which is accountable for the large percentage of
emission of greenhouse gas that is obviously impacting the change in climate. At the same time,
the buildings are also responsible for almost thirty eight percent of all kind of CO2 based
emissions (Dowling and Kent, 2015).
On the other hand, buildings are also responsible for not just a huge level of usage of water at
world level but there is also a large percentage of water which is completely wasted in the
process also.

ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN 6
Conclusion
It is important to understand here that many goals of affordable housing closely connect with the
goal of sustainability like location which is near to public transport along with various
community based facilities with compact level of design and many other considerations. At the
same time, there are also some goals that are completely opposite of every eco-friendly housing
which is also inexpensive and challenging to accomplish affordability without any support from
the government (Dowling and Kent, 2015). This is why, constructing sustainable and affordable
housing for everyone the criteria for accomplishing sustainability will not be the same across
many socio-economic classes.

ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING DESIGN 7
Reference
Burton, E., Jenks, M. and Williams, K. eds., 2013. Achieving sustainable urban form. Routledge.
Dowling, R. and Kent, J., 2015. Practice and public–private partnerships in sustainable transport
governance: The case of car sharing in Sydney, Australia. Transport Policy, 40, pp.58-64.
Hwang, B.G., Shan, M., Phua, H. and Chi, S., 2017. An exploratory analysis of risks in green
residential building construction projects: The case of Singapore. Sustainability, 9(7), p.1116.
Nelson, A. ed., 2016. Steering Sustainability in an Urbanising World: Policy, Practice and
Performance. Routledge.
Roberts, P., Sykes, H. and Granger, R. eds., 2016. Urban regeneration. Sage.
Weingaertner, C. and Moberg, Å., 2014. Exploring social sustainability: learning from
perspectives on urban development and companies and products. Sustainable
Development, 22(2), pp.122-133.
Xia, B., Chen, Q., Skitmore, M., Zuo, J. and Li, M., 2015. Comparison of sustainable community
rating tools in Australia. Journal of Cleaner Production, 109, pp.84-91.
Yigitcanlar, T., Kamruzzaman, M. and Teriman, S., 2015. Neighborhood sustainability
assessment: Evaluating residential development sustainability in a developing country
context. Sustainability, 7(3), pp.2570-2602.