Sustainability of Building Structures

The aim of this research is to explore the sustainability of the existing residential buildings and to analyse how sustainability can be assessed if sustainable materials and technologies would be used. The main objectives are concentrated in providing a general knowledge of sustainability and to examine how much sustainable the residential buildings are. To analyze the various technologies and materials that can be used in order to reduce the climate-altering emissions, to improve energy efficiency, to reduce costs and to improve the living conditions. Providing knowledge and tools for the sustainable re-design of existing buildings, which will be addressed to environmental, technical, economic and social feasibility of proposed measures, and to energy control. For the analysis, different case studies in different countries will be studied and then a life-cycle approach will be applied to a theoretical residential building, and all the relevant impact categories for the selected type of buildings will be taken into account. In order to analyze the sustainability of the building, a qualitative research will be done using literature sources, international database, journal articles, technical and official reports from the government or group researchers patented and SimaPro software. Materials and dimensions will be defined and will be studied the integrated energy performance, CO2 emissions, global warming, acoustic comfort, thermal comfort, indoor environmental quality for existing residential building structures. All these steps will be taken in order to allow an LCA analysis of the materials of the residential buildings and to define when can be considered that the system has actually been sustained.