Building circularity as a measure of sustainability in the old and modern architecture: A case study of architecture development in the hot and dry climate

Abstract

Nowadays, the construction industry has turned to the consumption of large amounts of natural resources in line with global population growth, which has led to the shortage of resources, and consequently increases in the construction debris; therefore, the present article has studied the positive and negative points of the architectural development process. The results have indicated that being compared to the former architecture; the development of architecture has reduced energy consumption by 78%. Hence, the scarcity of virgin resources and consequently the increase of environmental effects such as Global Warming Potential (GWP) have been measured based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). It has been illustrated that the architecture trend has increased the environmental impact of new materials by 5 times the old ones in GWP. To optimize and increase resource productivity, a review of buildings by the principles of Circular Economy (CE) has shown that 10% of old house materials and 3% of new house materials could be returned to the chain based on the CE concept. Other than reducing the GWP emissions of the construction industry and the development of zero waste systems, this paper, by replacing conventional materials with biocompatible, has been able to increase the Building Circularity (BC) by 27% in the old house and 3% in the new one, which emphasizes a regenerative approach. As a result, with this solution, more integrity would be observed between the construction environment and nature, both in the development of past architecture and in the improvement of future architecture.