Towards Socially Sound Sustainable Building Projects with a Novel Life Cycle Assessment Method

Abstract

In architectural practice, social values are created through design choices made by architects. Integrating social intents, along with their corresponding design choices, into a design project has significant implications for the environmental impact of the building. This fac-tor is often inadequately addressed.
This paper presents an initial study towards adopting a novel environmental life cycle assessment (eLCA) approach for assessing the environmental impact of social intents in building projects. The study focuses on exploring eLCA’s goal and scope setting through a methodological triangulation approach where the goal and scope are explored through various sources as follows: (a) a literature re-view of existing approaches within the building and construction industry, (b) narrative interviews and analysis with practicing architects, and finally (c) through a practical investigation carried out on social design intents from actual building projects. 
The preliminary findings indicate that incorporating social intentions into building projects yields significantly varying effects on the emissions of the building, contingent upon the specific design choices that facilitate these social intents. Furthermore, the findings underscore the necessity for additional research to reconcile the functional unit with the established units from other eLCA methodologies. Such an alignment is crucial for enabling a comprehensive evaluation of the impact magnitude of social intents within the entire building context.
This work contributes to bridging the existing gap in the assessment of quantifiable environmental impacts versus qualitative intention-based social impacts, paving the way for more informed decision-making and socially sound, sustainable buildings.