SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE
• Sustainability
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| Energy-plus-houses at Freiburg-Vauban in Germany Photo by: Werner Dieterich |
(passive solar building design, insulation and careful site selection and placement)
o Sustainable products are both environmentally friendly and more economical. There are several elements of building design and construction that can be more sustainable – including the materials used and machinery involved.
• Natural disasters and new technology
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| Tuned mass damper atop Taipei 101 Architect: Chu-Yuan Lee, C. P. Wang Photo by: Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke |
o Natural disasters in any nation can be devastating, but without well-designed buildings, the devastation can be significantly worse. Earthquakes are the biggest natural disaster that engineers and architects face, but technology and design is becoming increasingly successful in preventing damage to buildings.
o The 2011 earthquake in Japan is one of the best example of earthquake engineering working its magic. While the 8.9 magnitude earthquake was devastating further north, in Tokyo there surprisingly little damage due to the strict standards that Japan has on new buildings.
o The most common way to earthquake-proof a building is to use a tuned mass dampener, which sits inside the interior of a building and absorbs the seismic shock.