EFS Profiles
Ecological Design Group
Robert Gordon University
Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom
Purpose: Community Involvement, Sustainability Research
Please note that the copyright for this profile is retained by the institution.
The Need for the Ecological Design Group
The application of ecological design principles and technologies to the built environment has become a major imperative in the last part of the millennium with the increasing understanding of the global environmental problems that the developed world's building practice has helped to create.
The new agenda for sustainable building design must be one that insists on the incorporation of energy efficiency in buildings within a thoroughly developed ecological framework. The creation of new building technologies and design-forms must be intimately correlated with a systematic approach to both the biological and mineral aspects of our environment.
At present there exist a number of ecological consultancies which concentrate on the application of generic technologies or policies to specific sites. Few such consultancies are able to correlate the different interactive facets of ecological design from an architectural perspective which integrates them into sustainable design principles for a specific built environment.
Overview
The Robert Gordon University's Ecological Design Group (EDG) lies within the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture in the Faculty of Design, Aberdeen. EDG draws on a number of research resources within the school and faculty and can offer a comprehensive service in Ecological Design in relation to the built environment.
The Robert Gordon University has developed out of a strong technical tradition based on applied physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, surveying, architecture and art. It also boasts a thriving School of Public Administration and Law which has its own dedicated Environment Research Group which compliments and collaborates with environmental research in the Faculty of Design.
The Faculty of Design is comprised of three schools: Architecture, Surveying and Art. The active research in the Faculty is co-ordinated through the Centre for Environmental Studies with which the Ecological Design Group is associated.
Activities
The Robert Gordon University's Ecological Design Group is dedicated to researching into effective ecological strategies for the built environment with a particular emphasis on the use of ecologically benign building material strategies within defined contexts. This necessarily involves interdisciplinary working and EDG works closely with the Centre for Environmental Studies within the Faculty enabling it to draw on surveyors, scientists and environmental psychologists as well as architects.
The service includes advice on developing frameworks for ecological building design from first principles, frameworks for specification analysis in terms of impact, recycling and refuse protocols, design for renewable energy use, eco-auditing, monitoring, database building, organization networking, embodied energy, autonomous technologies and permaculture related buildings.
Work currently being carried out includes:
- Bioregional analysis of natural and synthetic building materials in Grampian: The development of Scottish environmental interrelational database
- Development and adaptation of Swiss material database system for Scottish use
- "Breathing Wall" technology
- Casebook-style database on ecological design schemes
- Sustainable design theory for multicultural use (PhD Research)
- Bioregionalism for the sourcing and use of construction materials (PhD Research)
- "Breathing Wall" technology development
- Embodied energy analysis of retrofit energy efficient measures in Scottish council housing
- Environmental assessment in the Cairngorms
- Environmental assessment on Woodland Grant Schemes
- National Private Woodlands Survey on forestry economics
- Assessment of recycling and reuse opportunities for materials in Scottish housing
- Passive solar housing in Newcastle and Glasgow
- Educational development project for "green" specification in a Scottish housing association
- Bioremediation of stone cleaning
- Low cost, sustainable rural housing
The Ecological Design Group is part of the Faculty of Design at The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. This location gives the EDG strong links to Europe and in particular to Norway and Germany where ecological building design is further developed than in many countries including Britain.
Being in Aberdeen gives the EDG the advantage of operating within a rural context but from an urban center, enabling the EDG to develop a highly regionalized approach to ecological design which synthesizes the built and natural environments. The use of the university's extensive information technology networks allows the EDG to work anywhere in the world.
EDG has links with of the Aberdeen Research Consortium which consists of The Robert Gordon University, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, University of Aberdeen, the North East River Purification Board and the Scottish Agricultural College.
For additional information:
Ecological Design
Group
This document was last modified on 02/20/2002 10:43:02 AM
© 2005 Second Nature, Inc.
