Sustainability from theory to practice: An architectural analysis of some principles of sustainability in buildings

Abstract

According to the Brundtland Report, a sustainable approach should be resource efficient ("development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"). How is this definition applied to architecture? And when did it occur? Strange as it may seem, the preoccupations for a sustainable environment did not appear in the past decades. It is as old as the building process itself: vernacular architecture can be interpreted as a process of building, taking into account the impact of the rules of nature on the environment; religious, monumental, civil or industrial architecture might have components that provide sustainability, if they meet some specific conditions. The paper aims to present some considerations of the architectural evolution of the concept of “sustainability”.