Abstract

Evaluation criterion of sustainability is an effective method of protecting stable Eco-system, enhancing life quality and reducing the waste of resource.

Recently, with the emergence of resource shortage and environmental degradation, people started to shift their attention to the development of sustainability, which is to find the balance among social, environmental and economic factors. Especially in the end of the 20th century, the concepts of sustainability had been approved by the countries around the world [8]. Some developed countries took the lead in starting develop sustainable practices and set evaluation standard based on the real needs of project construction.

However, many sustainable strategies and standardized systems are often applied to various sites without considering the particularity of each zone such as the diversity of social environment and region discrepancy. Thus, these evaluations appropriate for low integrating degree fail to guide practical constructions and reduce the overall project performance of sustainability.

This paper analyzes the case of the mainstream evaluation tools from several professional organizations such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Living Building Challenge. Most of them include aspects of environment, society, life, etc. In addition, based on the researches of regional condition and social features of Chinese different regions, it proposes two design improvements for rural sustainable development, regional evaluation emphasis and feasibility of Chinese situation.

This study reviews the concept of sustainable design for two Chinese rural zones and takes the regional features and social structure of these rural community groups into consideration. The base standard content and proposed changes as a contrast, and the results prove that regional strategies and evaluation emphasis play an important role in improving the sustainable performance of rural area construction in China.

In conclusion, a set of variations related to the standard based on regional design can largely improve sustainable performance and life quality on grounds of different requirements to create a better model for rural constructions. And these regional sustainable standards also provide more references and instructive significance for relevant construction projects such as Rural Regeneration, Pollution Reduction, Energy use, Passive Design and Economic Benefit, etc.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Sustainable development--China; Rural development--China; Ecosystem management--China

Publication Date

5-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Architecture (M.Arch.)

Department, Program, or Center

Architecture (GIS)

Advisor

Jules Chiavaroli

Advisor/Committee Member

Giovanna Potest'a

Advisor/Committee Member

Nana-Yaw Andoh

Comments

Physical copy available from RIT's Wallace Library at HC79.E5 Z43 2017

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

ARCH-MARCH

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