Regional Resource Centre for the Asia and the Pacific

Publications

2006

126 Pages

The building and construction sector is a major source of environmental degradation. Its geographical spread, rapid growth rate and the long lives of the structures being built, leads to widespread impacts affecting several generations. This makes this sector a hot spot requiring careful analysis and benign intervention. The dynamics of current socio-economic systems ensure that the sector will continue to grow at a rapid rate. The development pathways of most Asian countries are symptomatic of these trends. The application of eco-housing has the potential to reverse these trends. A central goal of this evolving concept is to achieve comfortable and healthy habitats at affordable costs, through low impact methods, consuming less resource than a standard habitat and using environmental friendly materials and products. It also sets out to be a net producer of environmental and social goods by imitating the self sustaining, cyclic processes of nature. In practice, this will involve minimising resource intensity leading to “dematerialisation” and to “rematerialise” by using the bio-climatic features of the site to create environmental and social goods. Bioclimatic design principles and life cycle approaches aids in this process. Ecohousing re-visits sustainable traditional architectural practices, explores the possibilities of modern technology and advocates the use of renewable resources. This wide spectrum of objectives needs to be integrated across several mature

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