SMART Architecture

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Sustainable Solutions for Architecture

The research programme of the chair is mainly part of the Sustainability research programme of the Faculty of Architecture. It’s a continuation of the former programme Sustainable Solutions for the Built Environment based upon the research of the environmental design chair of Prof. ir. C.A.J. Duijvestein. We emphasis the architectural scale, the urban program will get his place within the department of Urbanism e.g in the U-Lab. 
 
Research area and mission
The research programme explores the role of innovative Sustainable technologies in the context of architecture and architecture it self in the context of Sustainable Development.
An approach based on research by design seeks to develop design principles for promising innovative combinations and their effects on the social, ecological and economic dimensions of Sustainable Development.
 
The programme focuses on three fields of research:
  • A. Theories, strategies, methods and principles
    Sustainable Development as context of Smart Architecture
  • B. Techniques
    Sustainable innovative approach of the built environment
  • C. Integrated Projects
    Research on Smart Concepts, description and evaluation
Strategy and policy
Our vision concerning the relations between design, building process and external factors has developed from Building and Environment in the SOM (StadsOntwerp & Milieu) group, started in 1978, via “Duurzaam/ ecologisch Bouwen” that became governemental policy in 1990 to considering Sustainable Development as a challenge for new design and organization.
Therefore we relate the planning -, design -, building - and management process of the built environment to the Triple P of Sustainable Development; People Planet and Profit as established as UN policy on the World Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and changed in the Summit Johannesburg in 2002 to People Planet and Prosperity.
 
We base the, for the faculty of Architecture important, design quality of building “Projects” to the Triple P, so creating a tetraeder.
 
Related to the social quality of “People” are aspects like: health, freedom, safety, comfort, participation, livability; related to the ecological quality of “Planet” are aspects like: energy, water, material, mobility, waste, nature and landscape; related to the economic quality of “Prosperity” are: Costs, profit, affordability, transparency, accessibility, maintenance and related to “Project” are aspect like: beauty, robustness, flexibility, image, relations to other scales and spatial relationship.
 
For a Sustainable Development in the built environment it is necessary to find the mutual relations and a good balance between all those aspects.
 
This results in a diversity of topics as ingredients of Smart Architecture. The members of this research team find common ground on the goals of Sustainable Development and form a multidisciplinary research group that is capable to do research on a majority of the aspects mentioned.