Jag vill med mitt projekt undersöka på vilka sätt en produkt kan vara fördelaktigt både för slutanvändaren och för platsen där vi bryter/skördar materialet. Under arbetet vill jag också arbeta med både havet och människan som intressenter.

The area that once were “The Great Tenochtitlán”, the aztec city surrounded by five lakes, greenery and impressive sustainable systems for housing and agriculture has turned out to be a megacity growing uncontrollably, leaving a negative environmental and social impact within. Over the last 60 years the population has increased from 5.2 to 8.8 million (INEGI 2010) in the Distrito Federal and from 5.7 to 20.8 million in the ZMVM (Metropolitan Area of the Mexican Valley) known as Mexico City, area which is projected to be the third biggest city in the world by 2015 (United Nations 2005). Research Questions: What would it take for a megacity such as Mexico City to take a shift into sustainable urban design and re-development? How can infrastructures such as transit, waste management systems and public spaces interact in a hybrid urban fabric of blue and green structures, in which the natural landscape and the built environment complement each other? Aim: The aim of this study is to address a research in one of the 16 boroughs of Distrito Federal: Tláhuac, which will be the place for the first metro line reaching the urbanized south-east, therefore the activation of the area is imminent. Tláhuac is a borough with an agricultural-urban character. The area is inhabited by middle-low income families. Its connection to the city, commercial areas and public space is deplorable. The site has large areas of non-utilized agricultural land, these areas are constantly squatted, one large plot of land with these characteristics is right next to the site where the new metro line will be built. Methodology and Design Tools: The study and design is supported by the emergent discipline: Landscape Urbanism, its theory of infrastructural landscapes is used as a way to conceal the urban and the regional, and so as the belief that “Landscape has replaced architectural form as the primary medium of city making” (Waldheim 2006). The methodologies used are literature review and spatial analysis. The final outcome is a new way to do urbanism in the post-agricultural areas of Mexico City, by including the preexistent landscapes as the urban fabrics when developing towards a more urban character. The basic design tools are; infrastructural landscapes throughout the use of the canals and chinampas, urban agriculture, eco-housing, recycling stations and inclusion of new services and community areas.

Passive radiative cooling has been extensively studied as a means to cool the exterior surfaces of buildings and reduce space cooling loads. This phenomenon is caused by thermal radiation that is continuously emitted from surfaces on Earth, and transmitted through the atmosphere to outer space (at approximately 3-4 Kelvin temperature scale). To gain a deeper understanding of how terrestrial objects can access this extraterrestrial cold reservoir, I use a theoretical framework derived from classical radiative heat transfer to investigate the radiative properties of surfaces and the atmosphere over a spectrum of wavelengths. In this dissertation, I demonstrate the theoretical cooling potential that can be achieved by surfaces with idealized radiative properties under various atmospheric conditions. While several researchers have optimized the optical properties of their surfaces to emit strongly in wavelength bands corresponding to high atmospheric transparency, I show that a high degree of spectral tailoring is only benefcial when humidity in the atmosphere is low or when a surface can minimize its absorption of solar radiation. Additionally, I prescribe appropriate sets of surface radiative properties that are required to achieve cooling under various solar and atmospheric loads. An evaluation of passive strategies on building envelopes would be incomplete without considering green facades. To that end, I propose a theoretical model to calculate the heat flux reduction offered by green facades. Unlike previously reported works that use the Pennman-Monteith approach to calculate evapotranspiration in a leaf canopy, my model takes a simpler approach in calculating the sensible and latent heat loss from a layer of leaves while preserving prediction accuracy. By extending the theoretical models for passive radiative cooling and green facades to building envelopes, my work provides insights into the appropriate passive strategy suitable for a particular climate. In dry conditions, surface coatings with optically-tuned radiative properties can perform better than green facades by maximizing their thermal emission through the atmosphere. However, the additional evaporative cooling benefits, insulation and aesthetic value offered by green facades may make them more favorable in cooler and more humid climates. Since the cooling performance of all passive strategies is strongly correlated to the local climate, my work indicates that variations in ambient air temperature, solar radiation and humidity must be considered when choosing an appropriate strategy for a building envelope.

The ultimate goal of this research paper was to gain a more acute perspective into the relationship between the physical environment and human behavior, so that architectural design may begin to promote and affect environmentally friendly behavior in its users. The three main fields of psychology that were the focus of this paper were social psychology, environmental psychology, and cognitive psychology, all of which were essential to understanding the unique relationship one has with their built environment. The definitive goal of the sustainability movement, or what I at least think it should be, is the creation of an environmentally friendly society. The widespread use of sustainable architectural design practices has been a great step forward, but if this movement is to be successful, I feel we must focus equally on the relationship between people and their physical environments. Ultimately, the sustainability movement depends less on the architectural environments that we create, and more on the cooperation of the people who occupy those environments.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.