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This longitudinal study assessed student perceptions of sustainable design issues in the context of an accredited interior design program. Although literature exists documenting the integration of sustainable strategies into interior design curriculum, more analysis is needed to determine the impact of program experiences on students’ attitudes.

Over a four-year period, a questionnaire was administered to 245 freshmen in an introduction to interior design survey course and to 122 seniors enrolled in a professional practice in interior design seminar. In addition to statistically analyzing category responses between the two subject groups, the authors also looked for patterns in responses within each subject group.

Results indicated that the seniors were significantly more aware of the term “sustainable design” than the freshmen were. Understanding the students’ perceptions of more specific principles including life cycle thinking, environmentally and socially responsible materials sourcing and sustainable design practice required a more nuanced discussion. Although statistical significance of differences between the two groups was small to moderate throughout the survey categories, the seniors tended to be more deliberate in their responses.

This study is the first of its kind to conduct a longitudinal investigation of an interior design student body from freshman through senior cohorts regarding perceptions of sustainable design. Findings from the large sample size provide direction for interior design programs and form the basis for further study.

This research aims to explore various definitions of sustainability and sustainable design and determine the researcher's understanding of sustainable design concepts. In the past decades under the three elements of sustainability, between 1975 and 2021. This study is to conceptually construct sustainable design. It enhances and widens previous research to comprehend sustainable design. To this aim, a systematic review of the relevant collection of literature on sustainability and sustainable design will be conducted, guided by two questions: What is sustainable design? Do the sustainable design definitions involve economic, social and environmental elements? Since the concept of sustainability is to balance environmental, economic and social elements in product and service design.

The author conducts an inductive content analysis of concepts and definitions mentioned or discussed in several journals, a total of 573 articles were published, with a clear definition of sustainable design included in the review process. In the analysis, 56 definitions have been used.

In the analysis, 56 definitions for environments, environmental design, environmental innovations, social design, eco-efficiency, eco-design, ecological product, environmentally friendly product and the concept of sustainable design have been used. The most often used definition, according to the research analysis, is sustainable design. This research found sustainable design definitions might be unclear and the concepts could be misunderstood. Thus, the goal of this research was to provide an effective system for sustainable design definitions, with adequate flexibility to create obvious differences to encourage further research in this field to develop comprehensive definitions for essential concepts, the different definitions of sustainable design show a lack of understanding of the real meaning of the concepts. As a result, these inconsistencies are likely to restrict future research and the adaptation of sustainable design concepts in the industry.

The development of sustainable design concepts and definitions, as used by many authors and organizations, is aided by the availability of numerous information sources. As a result, lots of new terms have emerged in the sustainability field, or old ones have been developed, but definitions and conceptual meanings haven't received sufficient analysis. Because the meanings of certain phrases are poor, identical or just differ slightly, the variety of definitions generates significant misunderstanding regarding their usage.

The aim of this paper is to: study reviews of the urban renewal practices in Hong Kong and London; compare the perceptions of the design professions in both cities on the importance of different urban design considerations when defining urban renewal strategies; and verify the applicability of London's experiences in achieving sustainable urban renewal in Hong Kong.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to compare the urban renewal practices in Hong Kong and London. Questionnaires were sent to design professions in both cities who were actively involved in Hong Kong's and London's urban (re)development projects. ANOVA was adopted to compare the perception patterns in both cities.

The survey and ANOVA analysis revealed that the urban design considerations short‐listed for this study could contribute towards the sustainability of economy, environment and social equity. It was noted that the distinctive features of cities of various locations do have impacts on certain perception patterns of the professionals.

This article adds to the limited literature in this area and will be of interest to those involved in urban redevelopment practices.

Excessive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ undoubtedly lead to climate change, which directly affects both the natural and the built environment. Observing the impact of climate change on the construction industry, this paper examines sustainable architectural design as a tool to mitigate climate change.

To achieve the previous goal, the authors conduct a comprehensive documentary analysis of three types of sources: (1) scholarly articles in the fields of climate research, sustainable construction, green buildings and sustainable architecture; (2) contemporary global reports on climate change and its impact on the built environment and (3) practitioners' guides explaining practical architectural solutions to the climate crisis.

The systematic analysis provides three types of results: objectives, strategies and principles of sustainable architectural design aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change. On the one hand, the research results provide a solid basis for further conceptual research into architectural design responsive to the effects of changing climate. On the other hand, the detailed strategies and principles are relevant for urban designers and architects.

Among a range of literature in the field of climate change and its effects on the built environment, a particular value of the paper is in addressing a very local level, i.e. the level of individual building and its immediate surroundings. More specifically, this paper provides concrete design components that help reduce CO₂ emissions, finally decreasing the vulnerability index of urban systems.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the corporate sustainability culture of contracting firms, particularly in the Midwest. Many of the local firms operate nationally. The local corporate culture influences their regional offices. Other than convenience, the firms are selected from Midwest since their headquarters are situated in Midwest region and comprises of more number of employees than their other regional offices. This helped the research to approach more contractors for better survey and interview responses. The paper documents the study on existing management and construction practices these contractors adopt on sustainability and examines how their sustainability efforts influence the firms’ performances.

This research utilized surveys and interviews as the primary means of data collection. The data were collected from survey and interviews with selected companies operating in the Midwest region of the USA. One of the companies also operates offices across the country. Data from the interviews and surveys were analyzed using statistical analysis system software application. χ² analysis, particularly the frequency procedures using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel (CMH) method was the primary analysis method used to study the relationships between different factors. The CMH method compares the association between and within two groups and permits adjustments of the control variables.

The findings of this paper include the results from various Midwest commercial building contractors. The results on different aspects of sustainable practices and their success rates among the contractors are determined and discussed, and future scope of improvements are mentioned at the conclusion of this paper.

In summary, sustainable business practices are beneficial to society and favorable for the construction business. Embracing sustainable business practices has a positive impact on firm strategic performance for commercial building contractors through employee satisfaction, project opportunities, and market advantage. Sustainable business practices extend into the lives of individuals involved which exceedingly impacts society. The construction industry has advanced sustainability efforts, but there is a long way to go on the journey to being better stewards of the environment and resources.

A rival theory became apparent during the investigation that a new building consolidating all local company employees could have an impact on firm strategic performance. Third, this paper is confounded by a great recession that made project opportunities and revenue considerations analysis problematic. Some information regarding these aspects were helpful; however, expanding this paper during a more stable and typical economic period could provide additional insight.

This paper aims to provide an introduction to sustainable manufacturing concepts and practices.

Following an introduction to sustainable manufacturing, this article first considers various government programmes and information sources. It then discusses life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques and standards and certain product design issues. The benefits of sustainable manufacturing concepts are then identified, together with some examples of applications. Finally, brief conclusions are drawn.

Sustainable manufacturing involves a multitude of practices which seek to minimise the impact of a product or process on the environment. It encompasses the entire product cycle from “cradle to grave” and many standards and techniques have been developed to assist in its implementation, including LCA. In addition to meeting growing consumer demands for “greener” products, sustainable manufacturing can yield operational and financial benefits, including reduced material use, improved designs, lower energy consumption and reduced waste and scrap levels.

This article provides a timely review of sustainable manufacturing principles, practices and benefits.

This study examined data from 13 international tall residential timber building case studies to increase our understanding of the emerging global trends.

Data were collected through literature surveys and case studies to examine the architectural, structural and constructional points of view to contribute to knowledge about the increasing high-rise timber constructions globally.

The main findings of this study indicated that: (1) central cores were the most preferred type 10 of core arrangements; (2) frequent use of prismatic forms with rectilinear plans and regular extrusions were identified; (3) the floor-to-floor heights range between 2.81 and 3.30 m with an average of 3 m; (4) the dominance of massive timber use over hybrid construction was observed; (5) the most used structural system was the shear wall system; (6) generally, fire resistance in primary and secondary structural elements exceeded the minimum values specified in the building codes; (7) the reference sound insulation values used for airborne and impact sounds had an average of 50 and 56 dB, respectively.

There is no study in the literature that comprehensively examines the main architectural and structural design considerations of contemporary tall residential timber buildings.

Strategies to enable alternative urban food systems cannot be developed alone by those involved with the production and distribution aspects of food systems. It is important for architects, landscape designers and planners to be part of the process of conceiving and implementing innovative food-system thinking. Environmentally focused building standards and models for sustainable communities can easily incorporate farmers' markets, greenhouses, edible landscapes, permeable paving, green roofs, community gardens, and permaculture and other food-related strategies that complement energy generation and conservation, green roofs, living walls, and other approaches that have been more commonly part of sustainable built-environment initiatives.

Recently, architecture faculty and students at Ryerson University in Toronto and at a number of other universities have been exploring the intersection of these disciplines and interests. This paper will show how Ryerson tackled agricultural and food issues as design challenges in projects that included first-year community investigations, student-run design competitions, third-year studio projects and complex final-year thesis projects. These projects that dealt with food issues proved to be excellent entry points for addressing a range of design challenges including social inclusion, cultural context, community design and sustainable building practices.

This study explores the utilization of simulation tools for building performance assessments among design professionals in Ghana.

A quantitative approach was used to obtain responses from 104 design professionals in Ghana through a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was generated through a critical review of the related literature on the subject matter. Data from respondents were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results from the analysis indicated that design professionals in Ghana possessed a low level of awareness of the simulation tools used for building performance assessments. Subsequently, the findings also revealed that the design professionals' level of usage of the simulation tools was low.

Practically, the establishment of this study informs design stakeholders, educational institutions and researchers in Ghana. For design professionals, these findings will focus on enhancing their use of simulation tools for evaluating building performance in Ghana. For educational institutions, these findings will enable them to implement the necessary strategies for incorporating the concept of building performance simulation into their curriculum in order to boost awareness and utilization. Finally, researchers will also use the study's findings to identify any research gaps for future studies.

The findings from this study pioneer knowledge on an under-investigated topic within the Ghanaian construction industry. It also provides insight into the developing state-of-the-art technology employed in the built environment.

This research examined how Australian construction projects perform in the area of client-led innovation. The purpose of this paper is to test the influence of a set of enablers in promoting the innovative performance of construction projects and examine how Australian construction projects perform in relation to innovation.

A questionnaire was developed and distributed to over 300 construction industry practitioners to obtain perceptions of industry practitioners regarding client-led enablers to promoting innovation at the project level, with 131 valid responses received. The data from the survey were subjected to statistical analyses including mean comparisons, using the Mann–Whitney U-test and Kruskal Wallis Test.

This research identified a number of enablers that clients can employ in construction projects to enhance innovative performance. It also revealed that the innovative performance of construction projects in Australia appears to be above average, although the perceived level is not too high. The main finding of the research is that Australian clients could achieve higher outcomes from construction projects by promoting innovativeness in their projects, especially by promoting innovativeness in their own organizations and providing incentives/rewards and other support for innovative activities in projects.

Past research focusing on client-led enablers at the project level is limited. This research identified a number of enablers that clients can employ to achieve greater benefits from their projects through innovation.