The endless destruction of the natural environment and man's unbridled demand for natural resources has led to the spread of a series of environmental problems such as global warming, air pollution and land desertification. These environmental problems not only greatly restrict the development of the economy and society, but also threaten the living environment of human beings. With the change in people's living standards, people's demand for the urban living environment is also updated, and the sustainable development of the urban living environment is also a very important issue today. Some studies show that the energy consumption of building construction accounts for 35%-40% of the total energy consumption, and the high energy consumption of the construction industry is a global problem. The trend in urban construction today is to use prefabricated buildings, also known as assembly buildings, to promote the upgrading and transformation of the construction industry. Energy-saving and emission-reducing prefabricated assembly buildings will also be a trend in the industry in the future, and in the long run, the energy-saving rate of assembled apartments will be evaluated so that the degree of efficiency can be fed back to the relevant authorities to judge whether the assembled homes meet the requirements of sustainable development

Li, Zhiheng

English

Urban Transportation & Construction (E-Journal)

Volume 8 Issue 4 -20-Sustainable Urban Living Environment Through PrefabricatedBuildingsZhiheng LiUniversity of Glasgow, Glasgow G128QQ, United Kingdom.Abstract: The endless destruction of the natural environment and man's unbridled demand for natural resources has led to thespread of a series of environmental problems such as global warming, air pollution and land desertification. Theseenvironmental problems not only greatly restrict the development of the economy and society, but also threaten the livingenvironment of human beings. With the change in people's living standards, people's demand for the urban livingenvironment is also updated, and the sustainable development of the urban living environment is also a very important issuetoday. Some studies show that the energy consumption of building construction accounts for 35%-40% of the total energyconsumption, and the high energy consumption of the construction industry is a global problem. The trend in urbanconstruction today is to use prefabricated buildings, also known as assembly buildings, to promote the upgrading andtransformation of the construction industry. Energy-saving and emission-reducing prefabricated assembly buildings will alsobe a trend in the industry in the future, and in the long run, the energy-saving rate of assembled apartments will be evaluatedso that the degree of efficiency can be fed back to the relevant authorities to judge whether the assembled homes meet therequirements of sustainable development.Key words: Prefabricated Buildings; Urban Living Environment; Sustainability1. Prefabricated BuildingsPrefabricated housing is an industrialized production method to build houses. It is a house where some or all thecomponents are prefabricated in a factory, then transported to the construction site and assembled by reliable connections.Prefabricated buildings began in 1830 when a carpenter in London, England, designed and built a house for his son to live inand shipped it to Australia (Blismas & Wakefield 2009). By 1960, only 15% of U.S. houses were portable prefabricatedhomes, but interest in the architectural design of prefabricated buildings has grown considerably since '90. Jean Prouvé wasone of the pioneers of prefabricated houses, and his philosophy of construction responded to the technological changes of thefirst mechanical age with an economical and efficient pragmatism. Since the 1930s, Prouvé has been exploring the"prefabricated house", a key player in the transfer of mechanical mass production to practical construction, whether it bedemountable barracks for the military during the war, emergency shelters for refugees, or assembled public buildings tohouse civilians after World War II, these prefabricated housing elements made of metal, often assembled in a day by a smallconstruction team, provided an avant-garde solution to the post-war housing crisis.Some research have shown that prefabricated assemblies can achieve 15.6% and 50% reductions in implied carbonconsumption and implied energy consumption, respectively, in the material production process of prefabricated buildings.The environmental impact of prefabricated buildings manufactured in factories can be improved due to better productivityand quality control, and the energy consumption and emissions of prefabricated assemblies for on-site construction arereduced by 20-70%.Volume 8 Issue 4 -21-Concrete and steel are the main contributors to the energy footprint and carbon footprint of buildings, and Bonamente(2013) shows that both the carbon and energy footprints are reduced when the floor area of assembled buildings is larger.Faludi shows that if 25% of the cement in concrete is replaced by fly ash, total greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by11%-14%.The development history of prefabricated assembled housing: relevant experts generally believe that the developmenthistory of assembled housing has gone through three main stages, the initial stage: which focuses on building anindustrialized production system to meet the mass and rapid construction; the development stage: focus on improving thequality and cost performance of assembled housing; the mature stage: focus on the development of low-carbon andenvironmentally friendly assembled green housing, reduce residential material consumption, reduce environmental pollution,and solve the problem of residential diversity and personalization.2. Urban Living EnvironmentWith the rapid development of the economy, people gradually realize the importance of the urban living environment.The main factors affecting the urban living environment are water pollution and air pollution. Water pollution and watershortage lead to the threat to the urban living environment, generally through the system to build a better sewage regulatorysystem, through supervision to make each sewage production party more prudent production and discharge of sewage; fromthe engineering to building a better sewage treatment system to improve urban restoration capacity, as well as ecologicalrestoration of the city and other measures to improve the urban living environment. Air pollution is also an important factoraffecting the urban living environment. The main sources of air pollution are motor vehicle emissions, building constructionand coal-fired heating are outdoor pollutions. By encouraging residents to use public transportation and energy-efficient cars,urging construction companies to adopt greener construction methods, and vigorously developing alternative fuels and cleanenergy sources, the urban living environment can be improved.Residential buildings account for 13% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that is rising by 1.3% each year(Wood 2009). A residential building is socially designed to ensure that residents are provided with adequate comfort andquality of life during its life cycle, which also includes acoustic comfort, visual comfort, adequate comfort in rooms, and easeof use of public spaces and public facilities. The residential sector in the European Union statistics its energy consumption as63% of the total energy consumption in the EU (Banaras, 2007). There has been a debate about sustainable urban livingenvironments, and the book Sustainable Development and the City outline the advantages of high urban density due toincreased public transport and reduced reliance on the car (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999). They advocate that planningshould reduce facilities for car travel and that higher densities are needed to limit infrastructure, and they argue that roadinfrastructure is destroying the natural landscape (Vander & Cowan, 2007).Janis (2002) discusses in Positive Development the paradox of high-density urban living, the reduction of car travel andnearby amenities can be associated with urban living sustainability, but there are many variables and contextual factors thatobscure the truth about the impact on urban living environments. Urban living environment sustainability has been focusedon density and situation, using zoning and land use to determine the style of buildings from a spatial planning perspective toachieve urban living environment sustainability and the most effective situation to make the urban living environmentsustainable (Kendall, 1999).3. SustainabilityThe sustainability of urban living is related to the living environment and quality of life of every urban resident. Solvingthe sustainability of the urban living environment usually starts with various pollution problems of the urban livingenvironment and often ignores the architectural aspects. Architecture is the biggest difference between the urban and naturalenvironment, almost all the problems in urban life are related to architecture, and the solutions we are struggling to find arealso hidden in architecture.-22- Urban Transportation&ConstructionIn the discussion of the urban living environment air pollution is an important factor affecting the urban livingenvironment, building construction is an important source of air pollution, to achieve sustainable development of the urbanliving environment can be taken from the construction side, with prefabricated buildings to achieve sustainability of urbanliving environment has a practical significance that can be discussed. Contemporary innovative prefabrication technologiesshould be inseparable from the concept of sustainability. Today, ecological awareness is growing. That is why solutions withthe least negative impact on the natural environment are sought in architecture.Jim showed that modular buildings can reduce construction waste by 2.5 times, energy consumption by 5% andproduction time by 5 days compared to similar conventional buildings. Cao showed that buildings with 38% prefabricationcan reduce resource consumption by 35.82%, health damage by 6.61% and ecosystem damage by 3.47% compared tobuildings with zero prefabrication. Other studies have shown that assembled buildings have advantages over conventionalbuildings in terms of waste generation, greenhouse gas emissions, and on-site noise and dust pollution. Silva Pedro (2013)advocates near-zero energy buildings, hoping to minimize the energy consumption and waste emissions of buildings, and onthis basis proposes innovative retrofit measures for the construction of facades of assembled buildings.Several other studies have shown that benefits can be obtained by replacing or supplementing traditional on-siteconstruction with prefabrication methods. These benefits include faster construction time, greater energy and economicefficiency, safer fabrication, and superior quality and performance. In the face of the damage to the environment caused bytraditional building construction and the continued downturn in the real estate market, as well as energy-saving andenvironmental protection policies, traditional building production methods are facing a major bottleneck that the real estateindustry urgently needs to address. The real estate industry needs to change from crude production to intensive and refinedproducts, and to green, healthy and sustainable prefabricated assembled houses. Automated manufacturing of factoryprefabricated components can optimize resource consumption and thus reduce waste. One of the foreseeable opportunities forthe development of prefabrication technology is to reduce the weight of components and increase the share of recycledmaterials, including the use of scrap from prefabricated manufacturing and the recycling of industrial by-products.Kiebert's book outlines six principles of sustainable building.1. Reduce resource consumption2. Reuse resources3. Use recyclable resources4. Protect nature5. Life cycle costing6. Quality treatment of materials and surfacesThe advantages of using prefabricated buildings are as follows.(1) Improvement of residential qualityThe quality of traditional cast-in-place housing is highly dependent on the quality of construction personnel's characterand professional skills, and these human factors are likely to cause quality defects such as cracking and leakage in thehousing. Mechanized production of the components in the factory, automated procedures to control the production process, toensure the quality of the production of components, effectively avoiding quality defects caused by human factors, theconstruction site only requires professional installers to cooperate with the lifting, assembly components, constructionprocesses from complicated to simple, to ensure the quality of housing.(2) Energy saving and environmental protectionWith the requirement of sustainable development, the low utilization of resources and environmental pollution broughtby the traditional cast-in-place housing construction mode can no longer be ignored. The assembled housing constructionmode reduces the on-site construction process and transfers a large number of component production to the factory, which notonly reduces construction dust and noise pollution but also saves energy by about 30%, water by about 36% and materials byabout 70%. The assembled house construction mode is consistent with the concept of sustainable development and is a newcarrier of green building.Volume 8 Issue 4 -23-(3) Shorten the construction periodTraditional cast-in-place housing is wet-worked at the construction site, which is dependent on the weather, and theprocess of cast-in-place concrete is cumbersome, and the maintenance time leads to the delay of subsequent constructionoperations, which directly affects the project schedule. The factory production of assembled houses reduces the wet workconstruction on site, reduces the maintenance time of cast-in-place concrete, and reduces the impact of continuous badweather such as heavy snow, rain and high temperature on the construction progress. Only professional installers are neededto lift and assemble the components at the construction site of assembled houses, which reduces the tedious process ofcast-in-place concrete. The production of assembled housing components can be synchronized with the on-site assemblyconstruction, and the multi-dimensional space can be operated in parallel to improve the efficiency of housing production,which can save about 31% of the construction period and achieve the purpose of shortening the construction period.(4) Reduce construction costsTraditional cast-in-place homes are wet-operated at the construction site, investing a lot of formworks, scaffolding andlabour, increasing construction costs. In contrast, the components of assembled houses are mechanized and produced on alarge scale in factories, which not only reduces the loss of materials but also reduces the amount of on-site formwork andscaffolding. The construction site of assembled houses only needs installation workers for lifting and assembling components,which can reduce the number of on-site labour and lower labour costs. At the same time, the flatness of factory-producedcomponents is high, which can eliminate the plastering process in traditional cast-in-place housing and save labour andmaterials. Currently, labour and material costs are high, and the advantages of forming a scale system of assembled houses toreduce construction costs will become increasingly prominent.In summary, the use of prefabricated buildings allows urban living environments to meet the following sustainabilityrequirements.Reduce implied carbon emissions by leveraging recycling and retrofit renovation opportunities and prioritizing recycled,low-carbon, durable building materials and construction methods. We minimize carbon emissions at all stages of theoperational process and mitigate subsequent efforts to offset carbon emissions. We also employ circular economy solutions tofurther reduce carbon and waste generation throughout the building's life cycle. Integrate the needs of building occupants,including daylight, sleep shading, air circulation, views, temperature, sound insulation, and the smell and feel of healthybuilding materials. Prefabricated buildings not only help mitigate the environmental crisis but also help create the new greenjobs needed to transition to a low-carbon economic model. Integrating whole-life costs including implicit carbon emissions,in-use carbon emissions, and overall operations, the use of flexible and durable buildings contributes to the local economyover the long term.4. ConclusionThe above discussion reveals that prefabricated assembly buildings are an important means of sustainability in buildingconstruction, and the use of prefabricated buildings in urban residential housing enables the sustainable development of urbanliving environments. In future discussions sustainable methods can be adopted from other aspects of prefabricated buildings,such as the use of clean-fueled vehicles and close suppliers of precast concrete components, to optimize the environmentalperformance of assembled buildings.References[1] Aquino, A., Scrucca, F., & Bonamente, E. (2021). Sustainability of shallow geothermal energy for buildingair-conditioning. Energies, 14(21), 7058.[2] Armesto Pineda, L. (n.d.). Los cerramientos verticales de Jean Prouvé variables de intercambio con el exterior[Universidad Politecnica de Madrid - University Library].[3] Balaras, C. A., Dascalaki, E. G., Gaglia, A. G., Droutsa, K., & Kontoyiannidis, S. (2007, January 1). Energy performanceof European buildings. ASME 2007 Energy Sustainability Conference.[4] Blismas, N., & Wakefield, R. (2009). Drivers, constraints and the future of offsite manufacture in Australia. ConstructionInnovation, 9(1), 72–83.-24- Urban Transportation&Construction[5] Cowan, J. (2007). Building acoustics. In Springer Handbook of Acoustics (pp. 387–425). Springer New York.[6] Kendall, K. (1999). Emerging information technologies: Improving decisions, cooperation, and infrastructure. SAGEPublications, Inc.[7] Newman, P., & Kenworthy, J. (1999). Costs of automobile dependence: Global survey of cities. Transportation ResearchRecord: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 1670(1), 17–26.[8] Silva, P., & de Brito, J. (2013). Electrical resistivity and capillarity of self-compacting concrete with incorporation of flyash and limestone filler. Advances in Concrete Construction, 1(1), 65–84.

Sustainable Urban Living Environment Through Prefabricated Buildings

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Sustainable Urban Living Environment Through Prefabricated Buildings

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