Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has developed in Australia over the last 20 years into a technique for systematically identifying the resource flows and environmental impacts associated with the provision of products and services. Interest in LCA has accelerated alongside growing demand to assess and reduce greenhouse gas emissions across different manufacturing and service sectors. Life Cycle Assessment focuses on the reflective practice of LCA, and provides critical insight into the technique a...

Shortlisted in TAFE Vocational Education category in the 2004 Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing. The devastation wreaked by bushfires on Australian homes and landscapes is an all too familiar scenario. Yet, why do we often see one house burn, whilst an apparently similar house on an adjacent block can endure? Research has shown that many factors affect the chances of a building surviving a bushfire. If you are designing landscapes and buildings in bushfire areas you n...

Positive energy homes enable people to live healthy and comfortable lives with energy left over to share. Creating a house you love that produces surplus energy is surprisingly easy with a thorough understanding of how buildings work and careful attention to detail in construction. The Passive House standard, with its well-proven track record, forms the basis for creating positive energy homes. This book explores the Passive House ‘fabric first’ approach, as well as the science and practic...

This book draws on the author’s considerable expertise in land development processes and planning, and planning education. It takes a learning-by-doing studio approach and shows how to undertake a development feasibility study in three main stages: the preliminary proposal, a design and finally, a full report with a financially appraised proposal.Understanding Land Development shows how to tackle a real life project where there are situations of uncertainty and where there...

Construction teams are usually complex, interdisciplinary and temporary, and, as such, the need for effective communication is crucial. However, published data regarding the manner in which individuals interact within the temporary project team is scarce, with little other than anecdotal evidence available.Recognizing this gap, Communication in Construction Teams provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on interpersonal communication and delivers a critical revi...

The book presents Slovenia’s contemporary timber architecture. Thanks to its abundant forests, Slovenia has preserved the tradition of wood construction. As much as 60% of its surface is covered by forests. Slovenia is also the third most forested country in Europe. The high share of forest-covered surface allows for a sustainable production of high-quality wood. In the past, wood was used primarily in the construction of farm buildings, but now timber architecture is used for everything f...

Essentials of Urban Design explains the fundamental concepts of urban design, providing the understanding and tools needed to achieve better design outcomes. It is equally useful for designing places and evaluating designs. Each chapter outlines the key steps in designing or assessing a different type of development. All common types of urban development are addressed, from infill buildings to whole urban growth areas, residential to employment uses, and centres to public transport interchang...

Fundamentals of Structural Engineering provides a balanced, seamless treatment of both classic, analytic methods and contemporary, computer-based techniques for conceptualizing and designing a structure. The book?s principle goal is to foster an intuitive understanding of structural behavior based on problem solving experience for students of civil engineering and architecture who have been exposed to the basic concepts of engineering mechanics and mechanics of materials.D...

Presenting an overview of the use of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) within buildings, this book discusses the performance of PCM-enhanced building envelopes. It reviews the most common PCMs suitable for building applications, and discusses PCM encapsulation and packaging methods. In addition to this, it examines a range of PCM-enhanced building products in the process of development as well as examples of whole-building-scale field demonstrations. Further chapters discuss experimental and t...

This work discusses the impact of the life of buildings on sustainable development methods. The study of the lifespan of the building is used to assess and manage the environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life, from raw material extraction through to repair, maintenance and 'end of life' scenarios. While several papers have discussed thegreenhouse gas emissions of buildings, less research has been done on how these are affected by the lifespan of the bu...

The first public parks were created on urban 'greenfields'. Once these designated sites had been used, cities looked towards post-industrial sites, and built parks in places that had suffered from environmental degradation, neglect, abandonment and conflict. With finite stocks of urban post-industrial land now also approaching exhaustion, more ways of making parks are required to create inclusive, accessible and resilient urban places. Future Park invites Australian built environment professi...

This book proposes the use of waste from oil drilling and sugar cane bagasse ash in the production of ecologically friendly soil-cement bricks. It offers a viable alternative to the traditional bricks available on the market, which use wood as fuel: manufacturing bricks from waste is less costly and does not require the consumption of trees and forests. It also proposes an alternative to the current discharging of the above-mentioned types of waste in sanitary landfills, avoiding additiona...