Tipo arquitetônico em empreendimentos habitacionais de interesse social: impactos ambientais, diferenças no custo e em quesitos de habitabilidade

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a significant supply of housing units in social housing design (SHD), mostly fomented by grant programs and federal government funding. In contrast, the large number of works ultimately increase environmental impacts, inherent in the process of buildings production. Still, there are lots of buildings whose architectural type adopted are demonstrably more expensive than other alternatives, with a reduced quality in housing units. Therefore, the efficient implementation of these projects is an important aspect with regard to optimizing the use of resources - both natural and financial. Under the concept of the triple bottom line, it is crucial to understand the relationships of the type and other architectural decisions taken at the design stage, when it has the greatest influence on factors that can reduce costs, improve habitability and also minimize the environment impacts. In this sense, the main objective of this research is to investigate the influence of architectural type in environmental impacts, cost and habitability in social housing design (SHD). For this, we used the design and budget of a SHD located in São Leopoldo/RS and whose H-shaped design is widespread in the region. From that project, called Base-project, simulations were made of plants aiming to improve habitability questions and increase the economic index of compactness (EIC), on the assumption that with increasing EIC it is possible to reduce the amount of materials used in projects and hence to minimize environmental impacts and production costs. The Proposed-projects had the embodied energy (EE) and CO2 emissions of materials estimated, in order to compare them with the Base-project. Next, it was investigated the differences in cost and also in habitability, evaluated and compared among all projects. The results indicate a reduction of 7% of EE and 8% of CO2 emissions in favor of the Proposed-project. In terms of production costs, the Proposed-project declined by 7%, in addition to improvements in habitability such as luminic and thermal comfort, functionality and flexibility of the plant.