Sustainability Beyond Building(s) Toward Real Zero-Impact Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability in the built environment extends far beyond the walls of individual structures. While zero-energy and low-carbon goals have informed building design for decades, true long-term balance demands that we reconceive how we procure, use, and regenerate resources—both within buildings and across the larger infrastructure systems that support them. This Special Issue, “Sustainability Beyond Building(s) Toward Real Zero-Impact Buildings”, invites rigorous research into the many open questions surrounding the resource limits, material flows, energy transitions, and temporal scales required to achieve truly sustainable habitats.

At its core, sustainable building implies constructing and operating facilities so that resource stocks—materials, water, soil, and ecosystem functions—are maintained or replenished indefinitely. Yet most evaluation frameworks remain narrowly focused on short-term impacts (for example, annual energy consumption or CO₂ emissions within a building’s boundary) and neglect the effects of material extraction, embodied energy, infrastructure support, and land-use change over entire life cycles. We need fresh analytical approaches that integrate life-cycle thinking with resource regeneration metrics and assess impacts across multi-decadal to centennial timeframes.

Contributions exploring the concept of “zero-impact” buildings—structures whose net consumption and degradation of resources are effectively zero—are especially welcome. What technical pathways exist to minimize embodied energy in construction? How can recycled, waste-derived, and renewable materials be deployed at scale without shifting burdens elsewhere in the system? Beyond materials, how do energy supply networks, transport links, and water management infrastructure factor into holistic impact assessments? Papers that bridge building science with networked infrastructure analysis will help illuminate the trade-offs between on-site efficiency and off-site resource demands.

Moreover, the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources introduces its own resource pressures: mineral extraction for batteries and wind turbines, land use for bioenergy crops, and seasonal variability in solar and wind power. Research into circular economy practices—closed-loop material flows, modular design for disassembly, and ecosystem restoration—can uncover strategies for mitigating these downstream impacts. We encourage both empirical case studies and modeling efforts that quantify the long-term potential of real circular approaches (including restoring stocks and evaluating synergies between material circularity and energy system resilience.

Finally, we invite interdisciplinary perspectives that probe questions of scale and temporality: How do short-lived building components interact with century-scale resource cycles? What benchmarks can guide “absolute” evaluations of sustainability rather than relative improvements? How can we learn from traditional, low-impact dwellings—such as earthen or timber structures—that have inherently low embodied impacts and rely on local, regenerative materials?

This Special Issue seeks the submission of original research articles, reviews, and case studies that challenge current limited and institutionalized approaches and advance our understanding of resource-balanced, low-impact built environments. By fostering collaboration among architects, engineers, ecologists, and systems analysts, we aim to accelerate the shift toward buildings—and supporting infrastructure—that genuinely operate within planetary limits and endure for generations to come.

Prof. Ronald Rovers
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• zero-impact buildings
• resource regeneration
• 0/embodied energy approaches
• life-cycle sustainability
• restoring material flow approach
• renewable materials
• regrowable materials
• infrastructure integration
• temporal impact assessment
• built environment resilience
• system evaluations
• space–time calculations (land)