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Over recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that there is a growing need for so-called green buildings with a lower environmental impact over the whole building life-cycle. The construction industry demands strategies that support a drastic change of the way we develop, construct and maintain buildings. However, new building concepts represent too much of an evolution of traditional building systems, which does not necessarily lead to the intended shift towards green transformable buildings. The research aims to acquire knowledge about the impact of specific design characteristics on the complete building lifecycle, develop possible scenarios to create green transformable buildings, determine how the various strategies relate to the building lifecycle and to create knowledge about how to measure the effectiveness of the chosen strategies. The expected result of this research is a decision support model for building concepts. The model should lead towards a better understanding of innovative green solutions for buildings and therefore provide a better opportunity to create innovative new building concepts. This paper describes the research design, which will address the goals.

Current issues of increasing material scarcity, environmental awareness and the willingness to explore more sustainable technologies are opening the way for the offshore industry to improve the sustainability of offshore accommodation modules. The objective of this paper is to investigate if Design for Disassembly is an appropriate method to increase the sustainability of Offshore Accommodation Modules. A method is developed from literature and tested on Self-installing Platforms. The case study delivered a flexible and connectable module system for accommodations. Life Cycle Analysis will determine environmental benefits in material and energy use. Functional assessment promises added functionality in terms of flexibility in use, maintenance, upgrading and remanufacturing. First reasoning about costs suggests lower life cycle costs and lower transformation costs.

This paper is about an approach to get a better understanding of especially the so-called long-termstakeholders (e.g. tenant and owner). in order to be able to design buildings that optimally save the longterm-stakeholders and to generate fundamental sustainable solutions. The approach is now applied and evaluated in projects. This paper is to present and establish the approach. to report some first experiences in case projects and to draw some preliminary conclusions regarding the method, its results. the obstacles especially regarding the process and future research topics.

The present study refers to a set of tests using different amounts of microencapsulated PCM directly mixed into self-compacting concrete. This SCC is investigated regarding its fresh and hardened properties. It will be shown that increasing PCM amounts lead to lower thermal conductivity and increased heat capacity, which both significantly improve the thermal performance of concrete structures. On the other hand, a significant loss in strength and a micro-structural analysis both indicate that a large part of the capsules cannot withstand the mixing process, which is a result of insufficient mechanical and chemical resilience of the encapsulating material.

Owing to a general perception of resource efficiency and due to the fact that the construction industry is traditionally a large user of natural resources, the necessity to design buildings with a low environmental impact is increasing. In the last decade many tools were developed to calculate the environmental impact of buildings and many measures came available to make buildings more sustainable. However, not many papers address the influence of the composition of the assessment tool on the adoption decision of its user. In this research an assessment tool named GreenCalc was used to value and to improve the sustainability of an office building. To this end, more than one hundred and forty civil engineering students were involved as users of this tool. One group of students was asked to lower the environmental impact of the building with help of GreenCalc and another group was asked to do the same thing using a newer version named GreenCalc+. By using two different versions of the tool it is possible to reflect on the impact of the structure of the tool and the preferences of the students for particular techniques or measures. The most and least favourable aspects, and the way the assessment tool can stimulate the use of certain techniques, are addressed.

An efficient and effective use of solar radiation is one way to come to sustainable development in the built environment. Because of an average temperature of 9.5 °C and an annual incoming solar radiation of 1,313 to 2,881 MJ/m2, The Netherlands seem on first sight not to be suitable for solar heating. Nevertheless, the passive use of solar radiation can offer many inexpensive opportunities in low exergetic heating applications. In this regards relatively little is known about the application of Phase Changing Materials (PCM) and their potential to save exergy in the built environment within building designs. This paper describes the development, execution and results of an experimental research project on the use of PCM in concrete floors for the accumulation of solar energy, in order to obtain a constant indoor temperature during day-night cycles. The results of this research can help to improve the energy performance of both new and existing buildings. To execute the experiment four different test boxes, representing scaled living rooms, were constructed. Their windows are oriented to the South to make optimum use of solar radiation. Two boxes have concrete floors with microencapsulated PCM’s, while the other two are without PCM’s. Two boxes are insulated with thick heavy insulation material and two have thin light insulation material. During the experiment the outdoor weather conditions and the temperature of the concrete floors are being measured in order to gain more insights in the practical use of PCM within the Dutch moderate climate. The first results show that concrete floors containing PCM can have a steadier temperature gradient than floors without PCM. The PCM makes it possible to come to lower maximum temperatures and higher minimum temperatures of the concrete floor, and hence, of the indoor air.

In the present work the degradation of nitrogen oxides (NOr) by concrete paving stones containing Ti02 is studied. A kinetic model is proposed to describe the photocatalytic reaction of nitric oxide (NO) in a standard flow laminar photoreactor irradiated with UV lamps. In addition the influence of several parameters that can affect the performance of these stones under outdoor conditions are investigated, such as irradiance, relative humidity and wind speed. The kinetic parameters present in the NO reaction rate are estimated employing experimental data obtained in the photoreactor. The model predictions employing the determined kinetic constants are in good agreement with the experimental results of NO concentration at the reactor outlet.