Buildings, Volume 5, Issue 1

Sustainable development of the built environment in developing countries is a major challenge in the 21st century. The use of local materials in construction of buildings is one of the potential ways to support sustainable development in both urban a...

One of the key objectives of contemporary urban design is to ensure the quality and activity within urban public spaces. Presented as a progressively emerging paradigm in this process, the effects of urban climatology are increasingly elucidating the...

New Zealand state housing includes a significant portion of problematic buildings constructed after the public housing scheme launched in 1936. Most of these houses are still uninsulated, thus, cold, draughty, mouldy, and progressively decaying; howe...

The building construction industry faces challenges, such as increasing project complexity and scope requirements, but shorter deadlines. Additionally, economic uncertainty and rising business competition with a subsequent decrease in profit margins...

New Zealand houses are known for producing sub-optimal internal thermal conditions and unacceptably high internal moisture levels. These contribute to poor levels of health, mould and can coincide with the decay of structural timber frames. A propose...

Several studies have documented benefits of prefabrication system (prefab) compared to the traditional building system (TBS). However, the documented benefits have been anecdotal or fragmented with reports of isolated case study projects. Few studies...

A new replaceable hysteretic damper to better control seismic building damage, consisting of two or more adjacent steel vertical elements connected to each other with continuous mild/low strength steel shear links, is proposed and investigated in thi...

The relationship between the use of unflued gas heaters (UGH, N = 14) and heat pump heaters (HP, N = 12) located in the living rooms, and mould growth on the living room and bedroom walls, of 26 New Zealand (NZ) occupied homes was investigated during...

Residential buildings are now better engineered to manage rainwater following the leaking building problem in New Zealand. The next challenge is to improve the weathertightness of medium-rise buildings which often use joint details widely applied on...

The New Zealand building design industry assumes various building model inputs for the consumption of energy through lighting and appliances. It also makes assumptions regarding when these energy consumers are considered to be “turned on”. This paper...

Along with many Pacific Rim cities in Australia and North America, Auckland, New Zealand has enacted an urban growth management strategy premised on two concepts: “liveability” and a “quality compact city”. The effective implementation of this strate...

Building information modelling (BIM) provides architectural 3D visualization and a standardized way to share and exchange building information. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in using BIM, not only for design and construction, but al...

This paper discusses the design of a zero energy home in Panama. The standards for zero site energy as well as other performance factors are used as the basis for the analysis. A description of the construction type, energy use, active and renewable...

Design review aims to improve the quality of urban settings, principally by seeking to influence the design of individual buildings positively during the planning approval stages of development. Design review systems were first set up in New Zealand...

There is a disconnection between commercial architecture and environmental thinking, where green features can be included as part of a strategy for gaining approvals and marketing projects, but those features are not reviewed after completion and occ...

The need for defect reporting is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore at handover of new residential buildings. A general review in defect studies has consistently shown that newly built properties can be found to have a significant number of de...

The editors of Buildings would like to express their sincere gratitude to the following reviewers for assessing manuscripts in 2014:[...]

The world is on the eve of major changes in the way energy and material are used, and the building and construction sector is at the forefront. One of the revolutionary changes is that for 0-energy houses and buildings. Many countries already have so...