Samenvatting

The company, Harbich Ltd., is engaged in the construction of residential buildings. Traditional building materials such as ceramic bricks, concrete and reinforcement are used for construction. Given the fact that the production of these materials requires a huge amount of resources makes them unsustainable and harmful to our environment. With each passing year, the effects of the construction industry on the environment and carbon emissions increase. This leads to the need for a new environmentally friendly solution that reduces or replaces some of the conventional building materials.
The project is for a residential building in Sofia, Bulgaria designed with traditional materials. Harbich Ltd. is interested to start designing their buildings in a more sustainable way. A construction made of sustainable building material would result in great economic efficiency due to the long service life of the structure and low maintenance expenses and it can also provide a potential for increasing the values of the building. However, there is still not lot of data available about the possible applications of natural construction materials in residential buildings. There are several possible options for such materials for which sufficient information regarding their properties has to be gathered and analyzed in order to find the best fit for the project.
The aim of this study is to find a more sustainable solution for construction materials that is in line with the laws and regulations in Bulgaria. The research question, which will be considered as the main-question and will be an object of attention is: “How to improve residential building in more sustainable way with using sustainable construction materials”.
A theoretical framework has been developed to provide a foundation of knowledge for the in-depth analysis of the topic in order to answer the question best. The thesis is organized in subsequent research questions in terms of the desired results. Various research tools are used to get the essential information for the specific sub-questions. Furthermore, for the technical requirements it has been essential to study the local conditions and European design standards. These requirements have been used to set up possible variants in terms of different building materials for the sustainable structure. Each variant has been accessed with the Multi Criteria Analysis tool, in terms of Sustainability, Safe and Healthy Environment, Durability, Climate, Availability, Cost. Based on this analysis, it has been
concluded that the material that is going to be used for this residential building is Hempcrete, because it is the most suitable and feasible according to the client`s interests and requirements.
This type of material will be used as an alternative to used ceramic bricks. This leads to the conclusion that the structure will not be changed, it will remain reinforcement concrete structure. After the selection of the material, hand calculations were used to calculate the change, which the new material will show. It turns out that the new selected material is many times lighter, which can help to reduce the amount of reinforcement in the floor slabs and lessen the loads of the structure.