Perpustakaan Digital ITB

The past few decades several attempts have been made to get a better understanding of the diversity in appearance and expression of sustainable architecture. This paper will investigate different recent approaches to classification of sustainable residential design. Two recent student projects focusing on the contemporary context in The Netherlands will be presented to illustrate these classification approaches. First a brief summary of relevant publications dealing with recent attempts to classify the aesthetic dimension of sustainable architecture will be presented. These various taxonomy endeavors show both the variety and similarities particularly in the applied vocabulary. Led by these selected contemporary publications two recent case studies will be presented: a design project by 24 master students at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and a research project involving 14 master TU/e-students. In the design studio the assignment was to design a housing complex for 36 students located in Rotterdam. Key issue in the project was the explicit instruction to investigate the possibilities of replacing building services and devices by passive architectural and spatial solutions. Analyzing the results afterwards the designs can be related to the vocabulary derived from the classification approaches in the selected references. In the research project students investigated a self-compiled best-practice anthology of 21 recent Dutch autarkic and/or sustainable housing projects. They had the publications [1], [2], [3] to their disposal. Besides documenting the projects, part of the research were interviews with both the architect and the occupants to come to a proper understanding of autarkic and sustainability aspects of each housing project. They also compiled a method to measure autarky- and sustainability-indices for comparison. The paper concludes with investigating the correlation between scores on autarky and sustainability scales, and the position in the aesthetic spectrum as proposed in the student’s research project.