Low-cost green building practice in China: Library of Shandong Transportation College

Abstract

This paper introduces the design idea and technique utilized in the Library of Shandong Transportation College, which ranked 1st in the National Green Buildings Innovation Award in China in March 2007 due to its low cost and climate-oriented green strategy during its design and construction phase, including land saving, energy efficiency, water conservation, and so on. Originally, the place was a landfill site with an odor pool. After reconstruction, it was changed into the construction site of the library with an area of 7000 m2 and a scenery pond. With the integrated use of passive shading, daylighting, ventilation with atriums, high-insulation materials, underground duct ventilation, and the substitution of cooling tower with the pond water, the HVAC load design indexes are 59 W/m2 and 21.8 W/m2 for space cooling and heating, respectively, much lower than the newly issued Chinese energy efficient design code for public buildings. Moreover, a set of measures is utilized for water conversation, material saving, and improvement of indoor environmental quality. After three years of operation, the real effect has been validated by electricity meter and field measurement. The total initial cost for the building with the above mentioned integrated technologies was only RMB 2150 per square meter, which was worth spending in China due to the climatic adaptability and the relative low cost.