Georgiou, MD; (2006) An environmental guide for selecting wall cladding materials for architects. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In this age of the energy crisis where the level of ecological danger Is increasing worryingly, the meaning of sustainability and environmental design in buildings obtain determinant importance in both national and international level. As building technology evolved and structural and cladding functions become separated, the final portrait of the building's character, the durability of the external skin as well the physical properties of external finishes always challenge the architect since he is responsible for illustrating building's public face. The physical qualities and textures of materials used, their environmental impacts during llfecycle from extraction until the end of their use with recycling or disposal, as well as their financial cost, constitute some of the numerous factors which should be taken into consideration in order to choose the most suitable external wall cladding. More precisely, the choice of wall cladding materials are considered to burden building's envelope aesthetically, environmentally and financially to a different extent, three factors which are been examined holistically in this study. With the occasion of Granville Plus, a nursery school situated in London and created by Anne Thome Partnership Architects, where various materials have been applied as external wall dadding, a comparative handbook for choosing different materials as external finish for building is been carried out. The novelty of this study is the edit of an architectural guide where 17 fundamental wall cladding materials are been categorized according to aesthetic criteria and their physical properties in 5 basic categories, and for each one environmental and economical evaluation, examining values like embodied energy, recyclability, lifetime as well as cost throughout the assumed 50 years building's lifetime, are been carried out. The final aim is to set comparative environmental and financial indicators between materials in the disposal of architects in order to have the ability to compare materials with similar physical properties and to choose the most energy and cost effective.

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