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Environmentally Sustainable Library Buildings

LEED Winner - National Library Singapore

Introduction

United Nations’ The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, seventh goal “to ensure environmental sustainability” is base of worldwide recognition to the green movement from the construction to the services and every walk of life. There is a fast-growing need for the preserving the earth’s environment largely effecting the world communities, since all human beings share same climate on planet earth. Library, as a social and educational unit, remain no exception from world changes and challenges. On one side the libraries need to provide sufficient information resources for supporting the green moment and other side required to embrace greening practices itself. Although there are various aspects of adopting the green moment by a library but this study focuses on the library building and energy related concerns.

Definitions and terminologies

Although the debates on the green buildings are old enough to at least providing basic understanding of the concepts and associated prerequisites. However, still there various aspects to be defined. Office of the Federal Environmental Executive (OFEE) defined green building as “the practice of (1) increasing the efficiency with which buildings and their sites use energy, water, and materials, and (2) reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal—the complete building life cycle” . There also various terminologies, such as ecological footprint, ecological rucksack, biomimicry, eco-friendly, ecological economics, biophilia, green building, green assessment, high-performance buildings, life-cycle assessment etc. defining the ecological, social, economic, philosophical, scientific, technical, design and assessment aspects of the process. The green building concept is not limited to the saving energy but required to be responsive to the economic, social and environmental challenges and yet remaining functional.  [add more here]

Green Library Movement

[add more here] The green library movement the economically and environmentally sustainable design and construct buildings providing the indispensable, visible and feasible spaces for the users. Now a day, in developed world countries, more and more organizations are turning to green building practices, to reduce the environmental impact of construction and improve the health and wellness of occupants. The library associations around the globe e.g. IFLA, ALA, Oregon Library Association etc. are providing guidelines, blogs, frameworks, training and ideas for sustainable library building, practices, resources and services.

Asian Climate and Energy Status

Almost all countries in the Asia currently relies on outdated, inefficient power systems that fail to balance energy supply and demand as well as causing threats to the environment and itself have an endangered future due to limited natural reservoirs and climate change.

Research objectives and methodology:

This research is the first of its nature providing a framework for green library building design guidelines for Asian countries with examples of practical applications to the climate.

The paper aimed to:

1. Identifying the concepts, benefits and challenges of green or sustainable library building design,
2. Enlisting the standards and certifications for green libraries of both international and Asian countries,
3. Suggesting guidelines for the design of green or sustainable or library buildings.
4. Identifying and analyzing the LEED and certified green library initiatives in various Asian countries.

The first step of this research is a thorough review of available literature. Next, a critical analysis of selected green library projects from Asia, USA, Canada and Europe was done to develop a conceptual framework for the green library design. An important step was conducting the survey of forty-two Asian countries regarding the aspects that affect the designing of green libraries. This involves a comparison of climate profile, energy status, and use of sustainable materials and methods of construction; and importantly, the application of sustainable design strategies i.e. natural ventilation, green roof, earth coupling, evaporative cooling, diffused daylight, landscaping, etc., and use of renewable energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, etc. Data was collected from various organizations i.e. LEED, GBC, DoE, and other related organizations and journals.

Green technologies for energy generation/saving:

The green architectural technologies include the concepts of architecture, use of technology and ecological performative methods and tools. The fossil-based energy generating resources are causing greater threats to the energy reservoirs of the world, since they are nonrenewable and limited than its daily increasing consumption. The fossil and atomic energy’s sustainable alternatives are bioenergy, solar energy, geothermal energy, wind energy, hydro energy, blue energy, fuel cell energy and hybrid systems energy. The selection of these energy alternatives is depended on the availability in specific climate of region.

Green technologies for energy retention:

The retention technologies are of two main kinds: first one are related to the architectural design and construction and others are related to the location, time and user preferences . The technologies related to the design includes the 1). Insulation systems: bio-based, rigid panel, glass based, wood-cement forms, radiant barriers, natural fibers e.g. plants, animal and mineral sources; 2). Heating/Cooling Systems: furnaces, boilers, heat pumps, electric space heaters, radiant systems and green roof; 3). Ventilation Systems: natural and mechanical ventilation; 4). Water and Wastes Management Systems. On the other hand, passive design methods, direct and indirect grain of retaining the energy rely less on the technology but on the design and construction styles and thus offer longer benefits with lower maintenance cost.

Benefits of the sustainable energies: Most of these are cleaner for environment, reliable and renewable, domestically available the resources. It also contributes to the local economy and produced with the locally available resources and natural conditions. Reduce the usage of certain natural resources i.e. freshwater.

Disadvantages of the sustainable energies: Most of these are region, climate, time and weather depended thus often contribute little as alternative. Often costly at essential installment and later the cost per unit reduces, however, sometimes the cast remain higher. They also required larger surface and land for installation to produce little energy. Wind energy becomes noisy and may cast potential danger to birds and living beings nearby.  Sustainable energy generation technologies required high maintenance, skilled maintenance human resources and sometimes the legal issues.