The Impact of Traditional Natural Stones on Energy Efficiency for Sustainable Architecture

Abstract

Until recently, the architectural community had been utilizing traditional materials, environmental conditions, natural light, and ventilation of a construction to benefit from the natural resources of thermal energy, in compliance with bioclimatic elements. Thus, the construction workers were employing the fundamentals of energy efficiency and the environmental structure of that period. The construction of buildings was in compliance with the specific resilient bioclimatic design of architectural constructions, the traditional building materials’ durability, and the assets of free and greenery area around the structures. Over the years, the environmental endurance of the traditional building materials has also confirmed their maintainability. The maintenance of authenticity of the external view of the historic regions can be ensured by using natural local materials in building walls in the construction of new buildings. In this way, the modern indoor ambience as well as authentic external view can be obtained together to protect the original architectural texture of the region. In this framework, the utilization of natural stone as an authentic, traditional material represents one of the primary conditions for the construction of a new building. This study deals with the evaluation and analysis of the energy savings and energy performance improvements for an authentic restaurant by the utilization of traditional, natural stones as the building material for sustainable architecture. It is shown that utilizing wall material with Mardin stone results in an annual energy cost of 9,160 T, an annual energy consumption of 452,796 MJ, and an annual energy use intensity of 2,634.17 MJ per m2 for the restaurant that was modeled. The performance of Mardin stone and Diyarbakir stone is lower than that of Urfa stone for wall construction. The annual energy consumption for Urfa stone is 466,071 MJ and its yearly energy expenditure is 9,378 T for the restaurant that was modeled. The presence of natural stone walls aids the building’s bioclimatic comfort conditions and provides a natural ambience.