Sustainability
Sustainability is more and more becoming an important understanding in the built environment. Sustainability issues are increasingly taken into account in the design and implementation practices. Materials should be used in a responsible way during building process to minimize disruption to the environment and cause a maximum of benefits to the parties involved. The importance of sustainability and the knowledge required to apply it in practice are broadly brought forward by the University of Technology Eindhoven. During every phase of the study there are compulsory courses with the main topic Sustainability. The courses I followed during my study are: Duurzaam Bouwen 1, Sustainable Building 2, Integral Design, Technology & Sustainability, Energy & Consumer, Renewable Energy Sources, Reflections on Sustainability, Literature Review Duurzaam Bouwen and Masterproject 1 at TU/e and Minor Low Ec & High Tec, Literature Review Cradle to Cradle, Graduation Project Kulturhus at HAN Arnhem.
During my study at the University of Technology Eindhoven and on the HAN University of Applied Sciences their have been a lot of courses regarding sustainability. A few courses are shown below.
Literature review on Cradle to Cradle
For the graduation on the HAN University of Applied Sciences a literature review on Cradle to Cradle was realized.
Sustainable Building:
"Duurzaam bouwen"
To determine the level of sustainability there has been an increase of tools that can provide information on the impact of a building in the environment. In this course, we use the "GPR-Gebouw" program, a product of the municipality of Tilburg and W / E Consultants, to bring forward the sustainability aspects of the Traverse Building on the TU/e. In 1985, the Traverse building was completed and since then it has mainly served as an office building.
GPR Gebouw rates the building by: energy performance, environmental performance, health level, users quality and future value. The current building's performance on these subjects is around a 6 out of 10 and the Energy label is an E.
Furthermore the defenitions of sustainability and the policy of the different actors for us, as the government, municipality of Eindhoven and the TU/e, regarding sustainability are described.
After this research on the current building the future possibilities were reseached. Using GPR Gebouw these possibilities were applied on the building to make an estimation of the sustainability level for the future. Eventually the outcome of this studie was that if the proposed interventions were applied in the Traverse, the building would get an A label and a score of 7,5-8 out of 10 on the five subjects.
Sustainable Building 2:
For the course sustainable building 2 the research was taken into practice. In this course a lot of information about sustainability was brought to us by colleges and documents. This became more exact by the use of numbers and percentages to describe the effects of the current society. The assignments were three practical ones, the first assignment was about heat and moisture measurements, the second assignment was about heat and reaction modelling and for the third assignment three buildings had to be examined.
Assignment 1: heat and moisture measurements
Assignment 2: heat and reaction modelling
Assignment 3: Visit three buildings
Integrated Building Design
The course integrated building design focussed on sustainable reference buildings. These building are examind on the following criteria: Relating to the environment, defining space, strenght and stability, comfort, efficient and effective use of material, efficient and effective use of energy, flexibility and adaptability. All of these had to be rated and placed in an spiderdiagram to make an overview.
The following buildings were evaluated: TNT Green Office, Villa Flora, Christiaan Huygens College and Villa Welpeloo.
Eventually a design had to be made of a sustainable building on top of the Klokgebouw Eindhoven. This was also presented in a presentation.
