Guidelines for Sustainable Construction Methods to Build Over Difficult Topographies
Abstract
Sustainable construction development is a recent term that is required to create an eco-friendly built
environment using renewable and recyclable resources and to reduce energy consumption and waste
within protecting the natural environment. This term means such an improvement that pleases the current
requirements without limitation of the prospect of sustaining requirements in future. Many problems
face builders while executing projects, especially these projects were decided to be built over difficult
topographies, such as rivers, falls, inclinations, caves, ridges, cliffs, and mountains. Construction
challenges to build a project over a difficult topography are diverse starting by executing piles, retaining
walls, conserving stability, and choosing the proper sustainable materials that can withstand the natural
environmental factors. This paper sheds the light on the potential of any site's certain criteria; mostly
its topography and slope on the provision of sustainable and ecological buildings. It seeks to recognize
the sustainable and ecological variables of site topography, consuming a set of characteristics for each
building type. The main aim of this research is to propose guidelines of sustainable construction methods
that can be used to enable builders to build over difficult topographies, particularly on mountains. The
research therefore depended on a scientific methodology through analyzing a sort of literature sources
to structure a theoretical base, and then certain parameters were concluded. These parameters were
used to analyze a concentrated case study on a site attaching (Beaufort Castle-Chkif), located in Arnoun
South of Lebanon. Data of this field-work was conducted by site-visits, capturing photos, interviews, and
questionnaire. This site is envisioned to be tested for building projects over sloped contour lines of
Chkif Mountain. The paper provides an application for the development of the guidelines for passive and
sustainable capability on favorite orientations on the buildings in difficult sloped areas with respect to the
climatic local data, Application of the idea of the sustainable and ecological development in the building
construction will be an origin of engineering and scientific inspiration for many coming years. One of
the conclusion points is the preferable typology of projects to be built over mountains is touristic and
entertainment activity to attract people. The sloped contour lines may be employed to be a potential not
threat.
Coauthor(s)
Marwan Camille Halabi, Hiba Mohsen, Maged Youssef
Journal/Conference Information
BAU Journal - Creative Sustainable Developement,DOI: https://digitalcommons.bau.edu.lb/csdjournal/vol1/iss2/9/, ISSN: 2664-9446, Volume: 1, Issue: 2, Pages Range: 90-100,