Taking green building mainstream: The top ten biggest trends in sustainable construction
The World Economic Forum, since 2016, has identified climate and sustainability risks in the top three most likely and impactful global risks. In response to this, countries around the world have taken decisions together to create a joint vision for sustainable and resilient urbanisation. Moreover, KPMG’s report finds that sustainability in the built environment has slowly started to become embedded into public consciousness, and mainstream corporations and investors now understand the strategic importance of addressing this issue.
With predictions that 60% of new projects will incorporate green construction elements by 2021, we take a look at the ten biggest trends in sustainable construction.
Biophilic Design
Biophilic design is an extension of biophilia – human being’s attraction to nature and natural processes – which is about incorporating natural materials and light, vegetation, greenery, and other elements from the natural environment into the urban built environment. With health and wellness becoming a critical element of indoor spaces and various green building rating systems, there has been an increased shift towards measuring and benchmarking sustainability performance on an on-going basis. For buildings, this means that the performance is calculated based on indoor air quality, views, and lighting and occupant satisfaction, and accordingly, benchmarking sustainability performance on a day-to-day basis.
