
How Architectural design can improve Your Quality of Life?
Sustainable architecture is, first of all, a set of techniques, methods, and uses of materials that minimize environmental impact. It groups together ways of building that vary according to the availability of funds, components, and talent, and also according to the environment, for example having a sustainable building in a city is not the same as having it in the country, there are already many ideas: walls covered with a stone that absorb heat from the sun and return it at night; trees to protect the houses from the wind or the sun, depending on the climate of the place; rainwater reuse systems; gardens planted with species not exotic but local, which have evolved to withstand the conditions of that environment. From Cradle to Cradle: “Cradle to Cradle” (sometimes abbreviated as C2C). The chemist Michael Braungart and the architect William McDonough are the creators and promoters of a new design concept that they call “Cradle to Cradle” design. It is a design concept inspired by nature. In nature all things are the product of a metabolic process and useful for other processes, there is no concept of waste. Every product, no matter how useless it may seem, is taken advantage of.“Cradle to cradle” is, as opposed to “Cradle to grave” (from the cradle to the grave) a way of devising, designing, and producing in such a way that the elements that make up the products can be fully reused and reused. This implies a radically new conception of the traditional production system because it requires putting the idea of eco-effectiveness and the balance between economy, equity, and ecology at the center of design and development. Furthermore, “Cradle to Cradle” is also the negation of the degrowth economy, of guild management, because it is not necessary to renounce material well-being and a certain form of abundance as long as what we build can be restored to its cycle own life. There are three basic principles on which the Cradle to Cradle system is based:
- Everything must be designed to be a nutrient for something else (Waste = Food). The important thing is to understand that waste becomes the food of something else, but that what does not work on one side (whether they are considered waste or not), can serve on another. In nature, the residual materials of the metabolism of a given organism can constitute the food of another. The Cradle to Cradle system gets rid of the concept of waste because waste equals resources.
- Everything must be produced using the energy of incident solar radiation today. The Cradle to Cradle concept takes for granted the dependence on renewable energy sources that ultimately come from the sun, that is, the solar, wind, or hydraulic energy and various innovative biofuels, provided that they meet the requirements of the first principle of the C2C system and do not compete with food crops.
- Everything must contribute to diversity (biodiversity, conceptual diversity, and cultural diversity). Natural systems work and thrive through complexity. Compared to the standard solutions of the industrial revolution and the uniformity so highly prized by globalization, nature sustains an almost endless amount of variety and diversity. Each living being has developed a unique response to its immediate environment that guarantees its well-being and contributes to the balance of the system in concert with the other living beings with which it interacts. Rather than offering the generic solutions of traditional engineering, designs that celebrate and support diversity and locality better serve their original function by taking into account interactions with the natural systems in which they are embedded.