Attaining SDG’s…The Choices Designers Make Today Affect Tomorrow
25/8/2021
Prof. Dr. Noha Essam, PhD
Professor of Interior Architecture & Interdisciplinary Design
Environmental Psychologist/ A Member of World Design Organization -WDO
“An entire vision is driven by this motto that prompted to a new platform of design thinking towards innovative smart design solutions, with a recognition to the four pillars of sustainability; human, social, economic and environmental in the shades of the global goals focusing on designs, products and services that contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Striving for resilient community development, Work toward the realization of “leaving no one behind”, with relational potential of insight, creativity and innovation.
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Over the last few decades, our Earth has deteriorated massively due to the careless actions of humans. There have been many environmental problems and natural disasters arising such as global warming, water pollution, climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, floods, tsunamis, blizzards and many issues that not only affect Earth, but they are also affecting us; humans and all the animals, above and below water. The harm we are constantly causing to our planet can not be measured, but hopefully it can be stopped.
The United Nations General Assembly decided to set 17 goals which are known as the SDGs in 2015. These goals are intended to be achieved by 2030 to end inequalities, control climate change and vanish all forms of poverty. Sustainable development has been defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (“The Sustainable Development Agenda”, 2021). All developed and developing countries are urged to work on these goals and achieve them by 2030, meaning that if all the world united in achieving these goals, by 10 years we will restore our planet and bring back its peace and prosperity. The 17 goals are targeted to enhance the lives of humans, animals, plants and most importantly our planet’s wellbeing.
In the past 10 years, researchers focusing on the sustainability of the built environment have unanimously concluded that the existing standards and tools pay serious attention to the environmental dimension of sustainability. In addition, they emphasized that generally available standards lack indicators on the background, social, cultural, and economic aspects of the buildings. Although there have been many attempts to establish new frameworks to more fully integrate sustainability into buildings and the built environment, their widespread adoption has been very limited. Today, the international sustainable development agenda has attracted more and more attention outside the public sector, and is increasingly integrated into private organizations and local practices.
The approval of the 2030 Agenda in 2015 marked a worldwide milestone within side the area of sustainability and sustainable improvement. The agenda, inclusive of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets, hooked up a clean expansive framework for improvement which dedicates equal interest to the environmental, social and monetary pillars of sustainability. Moreover, the agenda’s targets have been strategically based around 5 key themes: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. The 2030 Agenda gives a strong and worldwide definition for sustainability over the following 10 years that's observed via way of means of worldwide, notation and neighborhood commitments. This balance ought to gain the development sector, mainly designers, in overcoming a number of the modern obstacles and help within the sector’s transition past its modern ecological and strength overall performance focus. Achieving significant integration of the 5 issues in constructing initiatives calls for stepping again from the present quantitative standards for assessment, to take into account the wider capacity contribution of homes to the SDGs and their targets. It additionally calls for exploring the approach to translate the worldwide attention of the schedule to the nearby and project-particular level. Although there was some of frameworks proposed for attaining the SDGs, they stay basically conceptual in nature and are not tailored to particular desires of creation, constructing and design initiatives.
Instead of an incontestable technique to sustainability, which ignores nearby information together with social, monetary and ecologic realities, researchers recommend to apprehend processes to sustainability as layout logics- wherein common sense may be described as a collection of thoughts or concepts, which provide means to social and bodily reality, that may be produced and reproduced, and that may increase via practice. sustainability can be perceived as an emergent assets of layout wondering via reflection-in-action.
Since the overdue twentieth century, buildings occupants’ expectancies of a greater modern, flexible, and comfortable lifestyle have increased. Meanwhile, state-of-the-art technologies, synthetic intelligence, and robotics have skilled incredible leaps in progress. The emergence of the information revolution further inspired occupants’ desire to make use of the internet, clever gadgets, web-enabled integration platforms, and IP-enabled gadgets of their each day lives. Technology has matured in its practicality and economic feasibility, owing to solid enterprise standards, increased market demand, and sizable cost reductions that made era available to a greater number of people. These attributes additionally bolstered the growth of constructing demographics towards embedding era and community connectivity inside their infrastructures, permitting smart homes to become part of the mainstream. Consequently, this stimulated interior designers to develop synergistic design concepts capable of integrating smart systems, fueled through an evolution in smart materials, smart gadgets, and sensors, as well as a wider insurance of internet connectivity and applications. Smart homes are therefore structured on designs that accommodate changes for the benefit of occupants, whilst controlling aid intake and analyzing occupants’ behavioral patterns. In addition, smart homes are characterized through their integrated communication and management systems which enhance occupants’ accessibility, security, and manipulate over indoors environments, and intention to boom productiveness and consumer consolation levels.
Smart interior design is characterized with the aid of using its ability to provide actionable records concerning the overall performance of layout facilities; the layout will become a locus for receiving, transmitting, and analyzing data. Smart interior designs proactively monitors and detects errors or deficiencies within layout systems, making sure the pride and comfort of the building’s occupants. It additionally contributes to resource rationalization, real-time reporting, and minimizing operational costs. Smart interior design presents fast, flexible, and monetary responses to the regularly various and complex requests made with the aid of using occupants, and determines the maximum green techniques for supplying a convenient, comfortable, entertaining, and effective environment.
Efficiency of smart interior designs can be measured through four attributes. The first characteristic is integration. When smart interior design solution are effectively incorporated with the bulk of layout components, this can serve performance, ease of operation, and minimize utility consumption over the layout’s existence cycle. The second characteristic is the success of excessive verbal exchange facilitated with the aid of using smart designs. This consists of person-to-person, person-to-gadget, and gadget-to-gadget communications, each inside the indoors surroundings and with the outdoor world, connecting homes in a cloud community that serves as an important a part of smart cities. The third characteristic is the functionality to evolve without difficulty to adjustments inside the area and be bendy sufficient to deal with new era requirements. Finally, the fourth characteristic that smart interior design should contain is manage over constructing structures a good way to optimize strength use at the same time as supplying real-time and historic perspectives of occupant behavioral patterns. Moreover, using smart materials and furniture in conjunction with smart lighting fixtures and acoustic solutions allows occupants adapt to the interior design theme, thereby increasing occupant consolation and satisfaction.
Smart design facilities include all available devices, sensors, transducers, signal conditioners, transmitters, converters, receivers, logic controllers, displays, recorders, and actuators. They also consist of network technologies, internet connections, and function packages that serve the reason in their modules. Priority order will be set based on the developers’, owners’, and occupants’ deliverable needs, as well as the constructing type, availability of funding, and the provision of gadget and carrier allowing technologies. Smart interior design solutions ought to comprise flexible systems that could accommodate smart design facilities. In particular, solutions ought to keep responsive cabling design, an open area with movable or demountable partitions, raised flooring, suspended ceilings, and mechanical flooring to permit connection among different design elements throughout a single infrastructure, in addition to assembly the needs of future technologies. One of the ultimate goals of interior design is to offer a healthy, safe, and comfortable indoor environment. Smart design systems can be proactive in controlling air quality through the measurement of humidity, pollutants, and toxic gas emissions. Systems can reduce these undesirable particles thru proper natural and mechanical ventilation.
Consequently, architects & interior designers have to inspire and recommend the use of smart designs and structures via way of means of embedding them into their solution specifications, in addition to explaining to their clients how those tactics will advantage all building stakeholders and their environment.