Publications related to Embodied energy

Embodied Carbon Premium for Cantilevers

David Michael Volpe Ruggiero, Paola Costanza Miglietta

This study addresses the critical need for sustainable architectural designs within the context of climate change and the significant role the built environment plays in greenhouse gas emissions. The focus of this paper is on understanding the influence of ...

2024

Multiscale Spatiotemporal Characterization of Embodied Environmental Performance of Building Structures in Geneva from 1850 to 2018

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Catherine Elvire L. De Wolf, Serena Vanbutsele

Load-bearing systems in buildings, significant in material use and embodied greenhouse gas emissions (EGHGE), have lacked detailed analysis on their environmental and functional relationships over time and space. This study evaluates the environmental impa ...

2024

RE:SLAB — a load bearing system for open-ended component reuse in building structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Dario Redaelli, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos, Alex-Manuel Muresan

The construction industry plays a major role in the high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, and waste generation observed nowadays. Key to the circular economy, structural component reuse arises as a promising solution to divert cons ...

2024

Osmosis-driven stiffening of structured hydrogels

Esther Amstad, Ran Zhao, Alexandra Thoma

Plant cells harness osmotic pressures to stiffen their leaves through strong turgor pressures. Key to this osmosisdriven stiffening is the confinement of liquids within semipermeable membranes that can regulate the transport of water molecules and ions. In ...

Elsevier2024

An explorative method to support design decisions based on carbon constraints and daylight sufficiency needs

Nazanin Rezaei Oghazi

The global construction industry contributes to 37% of carbon emissions associated to both building operations and construction. To help achieve the net-zero targets set by 2050, it is mandated to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. As we ...

EPFL2024

Hardware-Software co-design Methodologies for Edge AI Optimization

Flavio Ponzina

ML-based edge devices may face memory and computational errors that affect applications' reliability and performance. These errors can be the result of particular working conditions (e.g., radiation areas in physical experiments or avionics) or could be th ...

EPFL2023

Interactive design with optimum matchmaking of reused structural elements – a software implementation

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jonas Warmuth, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

Structural systems are a significant contributor to buildings’ embodied carbon and reusing structural elements in new load-bearing applications is one strategy to reduce this impact. However, integrating this approach into existing design workflows without ...

International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS)2023

OccuVAE: Integrating unsupervised occupancy inference in data-driven energy modeling for human-centric operation

Andrew James Sonta, Yufei Zhang

Data-driven building energy modeling is an emerging solution to facilitate the implementation of energy-flexible buildings. However, its black-box nature hinders interpretation, including with respect to human-building interaction. This drawback may bring ...

Association for Computing Machinery2023

Design of New Low-Carbon Floor Systems by Reusing Cut Cast-in-Place Concrete Pieces

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer

As floors typically account for the largest share of a building embodied carbon footprint, new strategies to build low-carbon floors must be developed and implemented. Among these strategies, the reuse of existing components is a promising circular approac ...

Novus Press2023

A Reuse-Ready Timber Slab-and-Column System for Modular Building Structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jonas Warmuth, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Alex-Manuel Muresan, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos

The construction industry is a significant contributor to resource consumption and waste generation. To address this issue, component reuse has been proposed as a way to prevent valuable building elements from being discarded and avoid producing new ones. ...

Curran Associates, Inc.2023

Energy, SBS symptoms, and productivity in Swiss open-space offices: Economic evaluation of standard, actual, and optimum scenarios

Dusan Licina, Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee, Verena Marie Barthelmes, Cecile Anne Berquand

The fundamental aspiration of new-generation high-performing buildings is to reduce energy use while securing indoor environmental quality conducive to human health and productivity. However, existing frameworks for identifying Key Performance Indicators ( ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Multiscale pattern analysis of building replacements in Zurich from 2000 to 2019

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jingxian Ye

Building replacement (BR) – i.e., the demolition of existing structures and subsequent construction of new buildings on the same site – is often understood as a necessary urban planning strategy despite significant environmental implications regarding soli ...

2023

Advances in hydration and thermodynamics of cementitious systems

Karen Scrivener, Patrick Juilland, Aslam Kunhi Mohamed, Fabien Jacques Michel Georget, Thomas Matschei

Optimising the hydration of cementitious materials is crucial to leverage their full potential and avoid wasting resources, embodied energy and CO2. Understanding the fundamental mechanisms is key to reach these objectives. In this paper, we review progres ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Resiliency lessons of traditional living in nomadic yurts

Dolaana Khovalyg

Technological advancements in the 20th century have significantly changed modern lifestyles and housing. Modern homes are well-insulated, and people in them typically expect minimally varying indoor thermal environments, bought at significant operational a ...

Routledge2022

Bridging the gap from test rooms to field-tests for human indoor comfort studies: A critical review of the sustainability potential of living laboratories

Dusan Licina, Mengdi Kong

Occupants play a key role in determining final building energy consumption. Empirical evidence must support occupants' modelling. Experiments on human responses to Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) are usually performed in test rooms or as in-field monito ...

ELSEVIER2022

Design of adaptive structures through energy minimization: extension to tensegrity

Gennaro Senatore, Yafeng Wang

This paper gives a new formulation to design adaptive structures through total energy optimization (TEO). This methodology enables the design of truss as well as tensegrity configurations that are equipped with linear actuators to counteract the effect of ...

2021

Methodology for energy retrofitting of Modern Architecture. The case study of the Olivetti office building in the UNESCO site of Ivrea

Franz Graf, Giulia Marino, Giuseppe Galbiati

Latest European Union programs related to energy efficiency underline the need for retrofitting existing buildings, which are responsible for 40% of EU total energy consumption. Accounting for almost 45% of the existing building stock, the architecture of ...

2021

Life cycle efficiency of solar shading systems: a proof-of-concept

Marilyne Andersen, Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme, Nazanin Rezaei Oghazi

Solar control strategies are essential for the glare control and decreasing cooling needs or overheating risks (in the absence of active cooling system), however, they come with their own embodied energy. With the carbon neutrality objective looking at the ...

2021

Shape changes through geometric nonlinear control as a strategy for structural adaptation

Arka Prabhata Reksowardojo

Adaptive structures modify their geometry and internal forces through sensing and mechanical actuation in order to maintain optimal performance under changing actions. Previous work has shown that well-conceived adaptive design strategies achieve substanti ...

EPFL2020

Database of Embodied Quantity Outputs: Lowering Material Impacts Through Engineering

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Endrit Hoxha, Catherine Elvire L. De Wolf

Current studies and performance labels focus mainly on the operational energy demand of buildings due to heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, and hot water, but they rarely account for embodied impacts. Performing a life cycle assessment (LCA) on an en ...

2020