26 January 2011

Sustainable building materials slowly gaining position

The extent to which architects expect that traditional materials will be replaced by more durable materials strongly varies in Europe: in countries where Architects observe more demand for sustainable projects, they also more often expect that traditional construction materials will be replaced.
This is shown by the Q3 2010 report of the European Architectural Barometer, a quarterly study among 1,200 architects in Europe.
In the United Kingdom, nearly a third (31%) of the architects expects that the necessity of sustainable construction will result in a drop in share of traditional building materials. A slightly larger group (36%) of UK architects doesn’t think this will happen too soon. In France, nearly three quarters (74%) of the architects think that traditional building materials will be replaced by sustainable building materials.
In Germany however, a majority of the architects (56%) think that traditional materials will keep their share.
The top five of products that UK architects indicate to be the most sustainable, consists of: glass (51%), LED lighting (51%), stone wool and glass wool isolation (51%), bricks (47%) and sun shading (47%). Vinyl and plastics are seen as the least sustainable products (only 15% and 18% of the United Kingdom architects indicate these products to be sustainable).
These and many other results are shown in the European Architectural Barometer, an international research among 1,200 architects in Europe.
Four times a year, this study is conducted by Arch-Vision in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Besides indicators to forecast European building volumes, a topic is highlighted each quarter. This is because architects are not only a reliable indicator for future building volumes, but they are also very influential in how projects are build and which materials are used.
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