sustainable housing

I do believe that people now and in the future is looking for not only houses or dwellings that are cheap and fast to be built but it must also 'house' a convenient environment and energy efficient that lead to a better low energy affordable houses that can be practised not only in UK but also in other countries that are still under development such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

One thing for sure, cheap and fast built housing can be built using a modular construction (also known as construction using off-site or pre-assembly production). But how energy efficient this can be? What makes it better than a usual on site construction?

Energy efficient dwellings means low energy houses that can be operate and constructed not only using 'green - recyclable' power (such as wind, water and solar/sun) but also by using local materials. Low energy construction also aims in reducing the risks of health and safety if the houses to be built on a brownfield site.

In the mean time, I've been reading some articles as background reading for the past one week so that at least I ve got an idea on what had been contributed to the research knowledge in terms of sustainable housing and had encountered this useful website recommended by my personal tutor: www.greenclips.com

As stated before, one key point for sustainable housing is to built it using a recyclable and (preferably) local material. The construction specifier had published one of their brief papers in greenclips, stated that while the lifecycle data on the environmental performance of metals used in cosntruction is difficult to come by, stainless steel, in fact, does have a recycling rates for architectural products which is very high even after a long service life.

It has stated that in 2002, the International Stainless Steel Forum had estimated the typical recycled content was about 60 percent! Stainless steel also known as a material able to be 100 percent recycled with no downcycling, regardless of how many times it has been previously recycled.

So..will there be a good future for stainless steel in the world of modular construction framework? a task that i should definitely try to find out in my MPhil/PhD research study:)