Constraints and Opportunities in the Application of Green Building Principles in the Professional Building Practice in Addis Ababa
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Date
2018-10
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EiABC
Abstract
Buildings make a significant contribution to environmental degradation and this have led to the emerging concept of “green buildings” which are designed to be energy and water efficient, use nonhazardous sustainable materials and provide healthy productive indoor and outdoor environments. This concept, however, is very new in Addis Ababa, which is currently undergoing a construction boom with a tremendous increase in the construction of buildings in recent years. Instead of taking advantage of the ideal climatic conditions, most buildings in the city use the glass facades causing glares and increasing energy consumption. Lack of greeneries and use of low albedo construction materials and impervious surfaces is trapping heat which will lead to the formation of urban heat islands. As a result, there is a need to enhance the environmental performance of these buildings through the application of green buildings principles for greater sustainability efforts before the problem becomes irreversible. With that, this thesis assess the nature of selected buildings based on the green building principles in order to understand the gap, its challenges, opportunities and proper approaches for application and implementation in Addis Ababa with a concentration on the design and development of vertical greenery because vertical greeneries contribute to securing up to 18 credits under the LEED rating system by dealing with most of the green building principles. A mixed approach that utilizes both qualitative and quantitative data was collected from primary sources through site survey, interview, questionnaires and secondary data through document review & case study to obtain the necessary information. By analyzing the data collected, it was found that most of the surveyed buildings have poor indoor quality sometimes contributing to occupant’s illness, rely on imported materials rather than using local and low impact materials, consume large amount of unnecessary energy and little consideration is given to water efficiency or the surrounding area. Based on the practitioners’ reply, the challenges for applying the concept of green building is lack of awareness about green building, lack of interest of developers, absence of government incentives and others while the best strategy according to the practitioners was public awareness campaigns to promote green buildings. Lastly, the thesis forwards the necessary recommendations based on the problems observed.
Key words: Green Building, Sustainable Building, Vertical Greenery
Description
This thesis is Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of science in Environmental planning and landscape design
Keywords
Green Building, Sustainable, Sustainable Building, Vertical Greenery