The first sustainable industrial building projects

Abstract

The construction sector is a natural-resource-consuming agent. As a result environmental criteria and other key factors must be integrated into construction processes throughout their life cycle. On the other hand, a more general concept of sustainability considers equally economic, social and functional factors. All these matters entail the management of much information and disciplines that require a specific methodology to quantify their real influence on constructive models. In recent years, there has been progress in favour of buildings being more environmentally friendly. However, sustainable construction has centred on residential and office buildings. It could be said that there is a lack of focus on sustainability in the construction of industrial buildings, which present specific characteristics that differentiate them from residential buildings. This paper aims to analyse the sustainable environmental requirements for an industrial building by defining a system of specific indicators to assess building behaviour against these requirements, ultimately generating an assessment model as a basis for measuring a building's ‘environmental sustainability index’.