An approach to integrate the environmental impact assessment process in the early stages of design.

Abstract

Nowadays, the integration of environmental dimensions in design process - and particularly in buildings that holding major event - has become not optional anymore. Consideration to environmental principles, effects of climate and sustainability in renewable resources is very important for building’s occupants. Adopting these concepts has driven most countries to adopt official strategies and policies in order to insure appropriate building designs. Certain certification such as “LEED”1, “BREEAM”2, and “Green Star”3 become one of the required and essential documents for construction approval. However, policies without awareness of assessment methodologies and tools are not enough, where specific and appropriate methods and tools could be employed. Thus, this research aims at providing a proposed methodology for environmental design process that takes into consideration the environmental impact assessment (EIA). The proposed methodology employs the environmental assessor (LEED) to judge the compatibility of the design with principles of sustainability, in addition to computer based tools in order to quantify the effectiveness of proposed passive strategies and measures. The use of computer allows the visualization of the unseen environmental attributes in a three dimensional interface, allowing by such comprehensive understanding of the issues involved in the assessment process. In this way, design proposals in the early stages of design; (I.e. design concept, orientation of buildings, using passive strategies…etc) could be quantified. This helps the designer to take the appropriate decisions in the right time. In an advanced stage but before construction, building details such as; building material, façade designs and projections, colours of the buildings, opening size and design, also could be tested and quantified. The result of the current research is the proposed methodology for the integration of the environmental dimensions in the design process. It is worth mentioning here that the author of the paper have applied the proposed methodology successfully on several projects on the regional level. Next paper will show the application of the methodology on these projects.