• Main request. Review of the available information and complementing the missing knowledge about pollutants and specific health issues surrounding alternative construction types and natural materials, as well as for recycled materials.
• Literature overview of Building Biology and it’s components in general.
• Literature overview of research conducted so far, on the health issues of alternative construction materials, and more specifically of recycled materials.
• Research about what possible electro-magnetic fields and radiations we may expect, in any kind of alternative construction type or building element.

Open for students and professionals of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Building Science. Send us an email to request the full assignment sheet via this link.

One relatively new area of interest is called Building Biology. This is a field of building science, which investigates the indoor living environment for a variety of irritants. It looks at the effects that the constructed environment may have on the health of its occupants, as well as their state of mind.

Important areas of building biology are materials and processes, electromagnetic fields (EMFs), electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and indoor air quality (IAQ). We can think of the effects on people, caused by cellphones, air conditioners, and steel reinforcements in concrete. We are discovering more and more about these, and the fact that quite a number of people is environmentally hypersensitive for such influences.

In this assignment we focus on the materials and processes part. Either on possible pollutants that materials may contain or produce. As well as to what extent certain elements can generate electromagnetic fields or radiation.