Novel Concept and Technologies of Sustainable Building Design

What are the current digital and/or innovations driving sustainable architecture? What could be the suggestions for a more holistic approach? The effects of Climate Change and Global Warming are currently visible to all. UN SDG 11 attempts to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Sustainable buildings are the key to sustainable settlements and cities. Sustainable design parameters may be visualized as the “genetic code” of a building’s performance requirements – similar to the DNA of all living entities. This “Building DNA” could provide comprehensive “Performance” parameters and could be programmed to be SMART – Sensible, Meaningful, Adaptive, Realistic, and Time-cost effective. “Programming” has become an all-important task, as specific parameters of geography, climate, topography, culture, process, technology, and logistics are key forces driving innovative and integrated architecture from its very inception. While shaping out “Passive” sustainable design solutions for site, volume, structure, envelope, interiors, and others one is trying to minimize the need for “Active” utilities, if and where necessary. The German government BMBF, Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service, funded program culminated in a web-portal and app climatehub.online. Holistic design strategies and academic research created a broader audience, a collaborative and deeper understanding of the topics on hand and a one-of-a-kind E-Learning Platform – Program. It is believed that individual approaches of experts should be linked together for a “synergetic” approach and that this combined effort across “OUR” PLANET could be more productive than addressing the issues individually/locally. In a nutshell, it is vital that the ecological responsibility as Architect, Engineer, and others lies in “designing sailboats and not motorboats in architecture.”