Title: Sustainable and Efficient Housing Construction

Author: Benno Büeler

Abstract

Today, traditional housing comes with high cost, high material usage, and a big ecological and carbon footprint. To build large scale migrant settlements or Free Global Cities fast, in high quality but at low cost, new approaches need to be considered. This chapter analyses the current situation, looks at the underlying mid-term trends in the construction industry, and finally presents Citra as an example of how the goal of sustainable and efficient housing construction could simultaneously be achieved. Core of the solution includes on the one hand the application of efficient composite materials which minimise the required material input while maximising usability, and on the other hand the application of mobile factory production methods which minimise manual work and cost, while maximising quality and speed. The mobile factory is also in line with having very high productivity for a certain period of time, but then moving it on to other places once no more needed in a given project. A typical side aspect of migrant settlements or Free Global Cities is location remoteness and harsh climate conditions, because pleasant places which are well connected to roads and railways are typically already occupied. Efficient construction should therefore require less transportation, but offer good thermal insulation. The solution proposed in this chapter meets these requirements very well.

Keywords

Affordable housing; Green building; Low CO2 emission; Mobile factory like production; Efficient construction; Advanced construction technology; Mass housing; Free Global Cities; Free Global City