Living buildings and the associated R&D based manufacturers - the revolution towards evolutionary construction

Living buildings and the associated R&D based manufacturers - the revolution towards evolutionary construction

De Ridder, H.

2011-06-20

The construction industry is not sustainable. Expressed in percentages of the totals in the Netherlands and when calculated over the total lifecycle, from the early start to the processing of waste after demolition, energy consumption is more than 50%, CO2 emission is more than 50%, waste production is 35 %, road transport is 25 %, failure costs is more than 15 %, average profits of construction companies are less than 2% of the turnover. The contribution of the construction industry to the GNP is 11%. The global figures will probably be worse as cooling requires disproportional more energy than heating. Obviously, the construction industry should be changed fundamentally. In this paper a great design of a sustainable construction industry is presented. Using ”attribute listing” as method, the contours of a future Construction Industry are described in 50 typical characteristics and attributes each of them in full contrast to the current situation. The result can be considered as Evolutionary Construction with Living Buildings, which are able to survive in a faster and faster changing world. These sustainable buildings are created by variation, selection and reproduction. Like car producers, building producers will develop new buildings from existing buildings. All properties, attributes and features with respect to architecture, quality, quantity and costs of these buildings should be described in a Parametric Knowledge Model which is continuously fed by each realization. Hence, each new or adapted building will contain the experience and knowledge accumulated during a long series of already realized buildings. A main condition is that each building of the family of buildings should have the same structure, which is the set of architectural, structural, mechanical and physical relations between the elements. But at the same time each building is unique by a large variation of elements. These buildings are fully (de) mountable and composed of standardized industrial elements in order to cope with changing environmental circumstances. As the lifetime of most elements and components are longer than the expected lifetime of buildings as a whole, a major part of buildings can thus be reused after dismantling. This Darwinism for construction industry manifests itself in adaptability not only over generations of buildings but also in each building that should survive in its own lifetime. In result, the Big Picture of the future culture and structure of the construction sector can give us some hypothetical benefits. An estimate: The value of buildings will be at least twice as much, the prices at least 50 % lower and the delivery time at least 50 % shorter. Moreover the energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be halved. In this paper the basic principles and thoughts, which have been used for this design work and the 10 most important changes out of 50 are presented. In 2012 a book will be published on Evolutionary Construction.

living buildings
sustainable IFD buildings
R&D based buildings
parametric design
integrated supply chain

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Conference proceedings

conference paper

(c) 2011 De Ridder, H.