Sustainable architecture evaluation method in an African context: transgressing discipline boundaries with a systems approach

Abstract

This paper presents a method for poverty-inclusive evaluation of architectural sustainability. Existing evaluation tools largely ignore poverty—an omission that renders them inadequate for use in a developing country context. Methodological challenges arise from the complexity due to inclusion of poverty alongside numerous other sustainability aspects. Moreover, the shared transdisciplinary nature of architecture and sustainability coupled with inherent scale polarities add to the complexity. The evaluation method discussed here adopts concepts from systems theory to develop a framework that addresses the above challenges. It yields credible results in a developing country context with a dearth of research precedents and databases. The method was applied in an empirically based study of the sustainability performance of earth walling techniques in Uganda. The study showed that, from a sustainability viewpoint, wattle-and-daub performs best, followed by adobe, whereas the most popular brick was only better than compressed earth blocks. In their transparency, the evaluation method and results here presented can stand conventional academic scrutiny. But the conclusions point to the need for greater acceptance of transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge conceptualism if the holistic disposition of sustainability, architecture and sustainable architecture is to be accommodated.