Innovative design for sustainability: Integrating embodied impacts and costs during the early design phase

Abstract

Purpose

As green building movement is widespread throughout the world, low-energy building becomes the standard. A designer's selection of building systems and materials during early design phase becomes more important. It is essential that designers include embodied energy and emissions among other criteria they use in selecting materials during the design development phase of a building. The aim of this study is to develop a model to integrate the embodied energy, embodied emissions, and cost of the alternative structure and envelope systems of a building during the design development stage.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual model is proposed to integrate the embodied energy, embodied emissions, and cost of the alternative structure and envelope systems of a building. A case study is used to test the proposed model in predicting the embodied impacts and cost of structure and envelope systems for an educational building.

Findings

The proposed model can assist designers in making informed decisions at the early design stage and selecting alternative structure and envelope systems considering embodied impacts and costs.

Social implications

Designers consider reducing embodied impacts of buildings during early design phase as an important social responsibility, especially for megaprojects, which have great impact on our daily life.

Originality/value

Development of a model that can be used to support design decisions regarding sustainable design (embodied energy and embodied carbon emissions) and costs of buildings in early design phase.

Citation

Zeng, R., Chini, A. and Ries, R. (2021), "Innovative design for sustainability: Integrating embodied impacts and costs during the early design phase", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 747-764. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-09-2019-0491