Elsevier

Energy and Buildings

Volume 36, Issue 12, December 2004, Pages 1287-1297
Energy and Buildings

Sustainable housing and urban construction in China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2003.11.007Get rights and content

Abstract

In order to ensure China, a populous country, to develop in a sustainable way, it is an urgent task to disseminate the concept of sustainability and put it into practice for urban construction. However, it is impossible for China to simply copy the experiences of developed countries, since China has the higher population and building density and less availability of reusable energy per square meter floor area. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the sustainable building technologies applicable to various climate regions, economic conditions, and residential customs in China, as well as sustainable to the most occupants and owners. Based on an introduction of the current situation of the development of construction industry and the energy consumption of buildings in China, this paper analyses the requirements, characteristics, standards for sustainable housing and urban construction, and recommends series of technical approaches along with different phases of sustainable design and construction, which strengthen a good cooperation among researchers, designers and constructors of different majors including architecture, planning, building physics, building services, and so on. Moreover, some issues, which need further research and especially handling, are pointed out along with the recommendations. Finally, policy issue related with the sustainable development of urban construction in China is discussed.

Section snippets

Background

Given the construction boom since 1990s, China has been experiencing a high growth of total output value of construction industry, and an annual average speed of 11% was achieved over the past 5 years [1], [2]. The residential and commercial building floor area increased by 1.6–1.9 billion square meters and resulted in a steady growth of total building stock [1], [2]. Meanwhile, the possession ratio of household air-conditioners for per 100 families in South China was increasing at a speed of

Best mode for the development of sustainable buildings in China

The sustainable building is also called ‘ecological building’ and ‘green building’, which is also well known as ‘energy efficient building’ and ‘healthy building’. Only technology aspects relative to energy and environment are concerned here for the sustainable building instead of aesthetic aspect in order to consume as less as possible energy and any other resources, be nature friendly and be healthy to the occupants. Since the energy crisis of 1970s, some developed countries contributed a lot

Difference between strategies for residential buildings and commercial buildings

Both the residential buildings and commercial buildings require good indoor climate and outdoor climate. However, these two kinds of buildings should be taken under different technical strategies because they have different building constructions and internal heat gains. The commercial building usually has larger area of inner zone and more internal heat gain than the residential building. Contrary to the commercial building, the indoor climate of the residential building is affected more by

Conclusion

So far, based on the analysis of the requirements, characteristics, standards for evaluation and the feasibility for sustainable housing and urban construction in China, series technical approaches and suggestions in different design stages of the construction of a building are introduced and recommended. These technical approaches are based on the research achievements of School of Architecture, Tsinghua University. Some of the technical approaches for a sustainable design need good

Acknowledgements

Some information and data about China energy consumption in buildings come from an investigation carried out by MOC, Tsinghua University and World Bank; the authors want to give their best thanks to them. This study was supported by NFSC (59836250).

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