KOTO – Encouraging sustainable development

 

The objective of this thesis is to examine the lifecycle of ecological construction. This investigation yielded a project design for the residences of a small community.

This work presents alternative methods for taking into account sustainable development in construction and housing. The environmental friendliness of a building is too often measured for the time it is used. However, in order to be consistent with the goals of sustainable development, one has to take into account the whole construction lifecycle: building materials, self-construction, durability, reparability, convertibility and reuse of materials.

My design for a small apartment building Koto is a modular log apartment, which can be combined into several building types of varying sizes.On a conceptual level I designed an architectural blueprint and more concretely four different choices of residence.

My design emphasizes that the intelligent way to build economically and ecologically is to simply have smaller buildings. The Koto-apartment offers a compact solution to a close-knit and ecological form of residence. I investigated through the means of design how to maximise space usage for residents.

This project is based on my personal vision on ecological living. I feel that traditional construction techniques and using natural construction materials are still relevant when implementing sustainable development. In my thesis I share information about the environmental impact of the materials used. I hope that my work will inspire other designers by reminding them that we have still not reached the potential of natural construction materials.

The Koto-apartment presents a ready-made solution for encouraging sustainable development and communal lifestyle in construction which can be implemented in the real word by supporting it with architectural and structural designs.

 

Final thesis. EKOKORTTELI KOTO : Kestävään kehitykseen ja yhteisölliseen elämäntapaan kannustava asumisratkaisu kehitykseen ja yhteisölliseen elämäntapaan kannustava asumisratkaisu. Hanna Niskanen. 2017. Interior architecture.

The permanent address of the publication: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201705056587