By the time a building is abandoned and falls into disrepair, its community is already suffering. Michigan scholars suggest it’s time to plan for structures’ end of life before they even go up.
Business scholars have found that our physical environment can influence us in a variety of surprising ways – including by prompting us to engage in riskier behavior depending on elevation.
Buildings are central to creating more sustainable cities, and green ratings are often used to assess how well a building measures up against this goal. But the current system has serious flaws.
Solar windows would need to trap enough light to generate power, while letting through enough to keep buildings light. Thankfully, newly developed semitransparent cells offer to do just that.
When talking about heritage, we need to be clear about our definitions and our objectives for each building. Then we can work on achieving the optimum balance of heritage and sustainability.
By putting the users of buildings – people – at the centre of the process of designing buildings and infrastructure, we can create healthier, more human-centred spaces.
The invention of silver and plastic-clad roof panels that can cool themselves down even under the Sun’s full glare promise to make air conditioning much more energy-efficient.
Water moves into Australian homes during severe tropical storms like Cyclone Debbie. But no definitive housing codes, standards or guidelines exist to stem the flow of unwanted storm water.
Adaptive reuse and recycling of heritage architecture may be all the rage, but are not new. Making new buildings from old has a long history in the ancient world.
George Washington had Mount Vernon. Thomas Jefferson had Monticello. Now Trump has his eponymous tower. Can it stimulate a more creative, sustainable approach to building skyscrapers?
Yesterday’s earthquake in central Italy has resulted in many deaths. But it is not the earthquake that claims victims but our built infrastructure. Why is this so?
Professor of Civil, Environmental & Ecological Engineering, Director of the Healthy Plumbing Consortium and Center for Plumbing Safety, Purdue University