From a Consumer Product to a Complex Building: A Quantitative Approach to Sustainability Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

As sustainability becomes a central figure in the design process in both architectural education and practice, conducting such environmental research is gaining high momentum in architectural education and practice worldwide. Although many architects claim their buildings to be sustainable, unless a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study is conducted, it is difficult to calculate and evaluate the total burden that a particular building has on its surrounding and global environment. This paper demonstrates how LCA could be applied from a single bldg material or consumer product to a complex system such as an entire building throughout its life cycle. It highlights the difficulties in modeling the whole building over a long service life (60 years) and its implications on the construction process. Studying the whole life cycle of a building also shows to what extent each life cycle phase contributes to the total burdens, where some environmental strategies could be applied to reduce the total burden. The paper also examines the significance of these impacts that occur during the life cycle through a case study of an office building in Michigan. It aims also to provide a comprehensive assessment to which building component (structure, walls, floors, etc.) contribute the most to the total impacts to inform architects' design decisions of buildings components that could reduce the total environmental burdens.