Study of the of the concept of community buildings and its importance for land use efficiency

• DOI: 10.13140/rg.2.1.4269.0402
• Publication Date: 2015-01-01
• Authors: Barbosa, José Ama...; Araújo, Catarina; Bragança, L.; Mateus, Ricardo
• Keywords: Building performance; 11. Sustainability; Community buildings; Sustainable Buildings; 15. Life on land; 01 natural sciences; Land use efficiency; 12. Responsible consumption; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Nowadays cities are facing several environmental problems due to the population migration to urban areas, which is causing urban sprawl. This way, it is very important to define solutions to improve Land Use Efficiency (LUE). This article proposes the use of community buildings features as a solution to increase land use efficiency. Community buildings cons ider the design of shared building spaces to reduce the floor area of buildings. This work tests the performance of some case-study buildings regarding LUE to analyse its possible pros and cons. A quantifiable method is used to assess buildings' LUE, which considers the number of occupants, the gross floor area, the functional area, the implantation area and the allotmen t area. Buildings with higher values for this index have reduced environmental impacts because they use less construction materials, produce less construction and demolition wastes and require less energy for building operation. The results showed that the use of community buil ding features can increase Land Use Efficiency of buildings.