Green Architecture – new trend of modern architecture

GREEN ARCHITECTURE – NEW TREND OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

What is Green Architecture?

Green Architecture (or sustainable building) is the saving-energy constructions built from eco-friendly material that contribute to bring nature closer to human life. Especially, these constructions don’t disrupt surrounding landscape, don’t negatively affect to environment during the process of construction, use, maintenance, renovation, dismantlement.

Green Architecture – the lost value

“Green Architecture” was mentioned in the 1980s with the concept of sustainable development promoted by the United Nations. And now, Green Architecture has become the trend of development of modern architecture.
Despite the trend of modern architecture, Green Architecture is not unfamiliar to Vietnamese people. We lived in the “green works” that we didn’t care or value. Do you still remember the bamboo houses or the wooden houses with thatched roofing, the wide yard in front of the house and the trees, ponds, lakes arround it? Those houses were built from simple materials, but it have still existed firmly in rain and sun over decades. However, due to the influence of urbanization, the “green houses” have been replaced by the buildings built from concrete, iron, steel.

Why need Green Architecture?

Today, our habitat is devastated seriously, air and water are polluted. The resources that we think are endless, now they are exhausted. The temperature of the air is increasingly high and uncomfortable, the floods, disasters appear more and more intense. The concentration of smoke in the big cities in Vietnam such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city is exceeding the permitted level, so the health and human life are unavoidable the negative effects.
When we act only for immediate benefits, not for nature, we will get consequences ourselves. Perhaps, it’s time to back to find the lost values. Let learn to treat respectfully to nature as previous generation had done.

The benefits of Green Architecture

• Environmental benefits: Protecting ecosystems and biodiversity, limiting air and water pollution, reducing solid waste and preserve natural resources. According to recent research, green buildings use less 26% energy, less 13% maintanance, less 33% greenhouse gas emisssion than other buildings.
• Economic benefits: Reducing costs during using the work, payback quickly. The consumers today prefer green building to other projects.
• Social benefits: Creating friendly environment to customers: better air quality in home, optimize the comfort of all functions in the building.

5 criteria of Vietnam Green Architecture

• Sustainable location: Creating the harmonious and sustainable landscape, minimizing the negative impacts to surrounding landscape, exploting and promoting the natural elements which are helpful to human life.
• Using resource and energy effectively: Increasing efficiency, saving resources and energy, limiting the impacts to natural environment and reducing greenhouse effects.
• Quality of environment in house: Creating the quality indoor environment, ensure safety, hygience and convenience, using work effectively.
• Advanced architecture imbued with national identiy: Towards modern architecture, inheriting traditional value, creating Vietnamese architectural identity.
• Social-human and sustainable: Developing architecture with the goal of creating, maintaining the stable and sustainable social and humanistic environment.