Freja Nygaard Rasmussen

LCA of Buildings and the Built Environment

How we design human settlements has a profound influence on society’s environmental pressures. This chapter explores the current state of LCA applied to two scales of human settlements; individual buildings and the built environment, where the built environment is understood as a collection of autonomous buildings along with the infrastructure and human activity between those buildings. The application of LCA to buildings has seen growing interest in recent years, partly as a result of the increased application of environmental certification to buildings. General findings are that the use stage of the building tends to dominate environmental impacts, though as buildings become increasingly energy efficient, life cycle impacts shift towards other stages. LCA of built environments has been a useful supplement to mass-based urban environmental assessments, highlighting the importance of embodied environmental impacts in imported goods and showing interesting trade-offs between dense urban living and the greater purchasing power of wealthy urbanites. LCAs of human settlements also face difficult challenges; the long use stage (often decades) introduces high uncertainty regarding the end-of-life stage; evolving electrical mixes throughout the use stage; gaps in consumption data at the city level. This chapter endeavours to elucidate the strengths, research needs and methodological shortcomings of LCA as applied to buildings and the built environment, showing that they can act as complimentary tools to help society’s shift towards a sustainable future.

Development of the LCAbyg tool: influence of user requirements and context

Citation for published version (APA): Jensen, J. O., Gram-Hanssen, K., & Friis, F. (2016). Local initiatives for motivating Danish house-owners for energy improvements. In Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2016 in Hamburg : Strategies, Stakeholders, Success factors, 7th 11th March 2016 ; Conference Proceedings (1 ed., pp. 826-835). Hamburg: ZEBAU, Hamburg. https://doi.org/10.5445/IR/1000051699This paper considers two linked architectural projects designed and delivered by the author. The first considered the challenges associated with designing and building a energy efficient prefabricated dwelling in just six days, using predominately locally sourced, organic, ‘compostable’ materials whilst creating no waste on site. 5 million viewers a night on UK TV saw this program. However, frustrated by the lack of credible communication of the challenges associated with this project that the medium of TV provided, the author was keen to re-build this project on campus at the University of Brighton where he taught, so that he could involve students in all aspects of the process, thus sharing the learning experience and proving that ‘live’ construction projects could be a useful pedagogic tool. This paper considers why the design emphasis of the second project went from ‘locking carbon’ and zero waste on site, to constructing with waste and proving “that there is no such thing as waste just stuff in the wrong place”. http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/business-and-community/wastehouse

Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2016 in Hamburg : Strategies, Stakeholders, Success factors, 7th - 11th March 2016 ; Conference Proceedings

Citation for published version (APA): Jensen, J. O., Gram-Hanssen, K., & Friis, F. (2016). Local initiatives for motivating Danish house-owners for energy improvements. In Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2016 in Hamburg : Strategies, Stakeholders, Success factors, 7th 11th March 2016 ; Conference Proceedings (1 ed., pp. 826-835). Hamburg: ZEBAU, Hamburg. https://doi.org/10.5445/IR/1000051699This paper considers two linked architectural projects designed and delivered by the author. The first considered the challenges associated with designing and building a energy efficient prefabricated dwelling in just six days, using predominately locally sourced, organic, ‘compostable’ materials whilst creating no waste on site. 5 million viewers a night on UK TV saw this program. However, frustrated by the lack of credible communication of the challenges associated with this project that the medium of TV provided, the author was keen to re-build this project on campus at the University of Brighton where he taught, so that he could involve students in all aspects of the process, thus sharing the learning experience and proving that ‘live’ construction projects could be a useful pedagogic tool. This paper considers why the design emphasis of the second project went from ‘locking carbon’ and zero waste on site, to constructing with waste and proving “that there is no such thing as waste just stuff in the wrong place”. http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/business-and-community/wastehouse