How regenerative building projects are presenting new opportunities to aluminium?

The building and construction (B&C) sector is confronted with major sustainability challenges. Among a host of certification schemes in operations globally, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) stands as the most rigorous one. The scheme basically challenges the industry players to move beyond sustainability and adopt regenerative development on a wider scale. Aluminium construction systems have made major inroads into this novel B&C space. How? Let’s find it here…

For architects and firms daring to take the LBC building challenge meeting the materials imperatives turns out to be the most difficult thing. In fact, they need to recognize the difficulty early in the design process so that they have enough options to explore and decide accordingly.

When undertaking regenerative projects or sustainability assessments, the chosen emissions baseline is critical to achieving the builder’s intentions. According to the industry experts of The Fifth Estate, a portal dedicated to real estate, too often, it is seen that projects claim credits for using partially recycled materials when it is practically impossible to purchase virgin material stock; and credits for fly ash in concrete, even though most high-performance mixes already incorporate supplementary cementitious material.

To address this issue, the LBC has set the baseline at zero which entails the teams to account for all the embodied energy and equivalent CO2 emissions of the materials and construction works and then offset these emissions.

So, what are the guiding principles for materials selection and design that would limit the impact on environment?

1. Reducing overall use of materials, opting for stronger and tougher materials, and shifting to multifunctional materials lead to designing smaller buildings with fewer appurtenances.
2. Reusing salvaged materials, not taken out of service ahead of time
3. Choosing low-embodied energy materials like aluminium, glass, concrete, and steel
4. Minimising waste generation over the entire lifecycle of a project
5. Designing for adaptability

The challenge of regenerative materials and making logical use aluminium structural components can be daunting, yet rewarding. It continually throws up new opportunities for architects and engineers who strive to give shape to their designs through the intelligent use of green materials.

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