Green Building Culture and Energy Conservation in the Townships

During the past 50 years, twenty percent of the inhabitants of the planet have had a strong development that deeply impacted positively on their habits and quality of life. On the other hand, the remaining four-fifths of the inhabitants are living in bad condition because of a lack of meaningful opportunity. An emblematic case is the living quality in the townships. There is a need to enhance the quality of life in the townships in such a way as to be in balance with nature, avoiding continuing pollution to our planet. There is a vital need for a paradigm shift; rethinking the buildings, the cities and their organization to ensure the lifestyle that we have at present, and to have a sustainable city that grows and develops from a new, good relation between nature and mankind, in which it is possible to recreate the lost human contacts. In order to realize sustainable buildings in balance with the natural environment and to reduce, to the minimum, the impact in terms of pollution and exploitation of the not renewable resources, it is necessary, in our opinion, to follow six design criteria in the building design: 1. Use of renewable or recyclable and recycled materials for the building construction; 2. Use of a thermal insulation coherent with the climate local conditions; 3. A strong bioclimatic characterization of the buildings; 4. Integration with energy systems that use alternative and clean resources; 5. Installation of building automation systems for managing the energy consumption; 6. Energy interchange between the buildings and the infrastructures: the smart district. The question is to establish a viable transfer of these concepts of building sustainability to the real case of townships in terms of: 1. Enhancement of life quality; 2. Conservation of not renewable resources; 3. Reduction of the pollution of the environmental matrices: water, soil, air; 4. Reduction of energy consumption For the attainment of these noble goals, firstly, we have to enhance the green culture of the people; then, develop new urban models; and lastly, improve the buildings. The execution of the latter may involve refurbishment of the existing building estate and/or introduction of new buildings constructed with new criteria. Several solutions to the above challenges have been identified through collaborative research conducted by Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa and University of Trento, Italy with the support of the Italian Institute of Culture, Pretoria, South Africa.