Environmental impacts of adobe as a building material: The north cyprus traditional building case

The urgency of global climate change has drawn significant attention to the building industry over the last few years. Today, the building sector is responsible for the emission of about 23–40% of the world greenhouse gases. This is plausible owing to the various non environmental friendly materials used by modern building industry and the palpable contemporary design construct. Unlike modern buildings, traditional building materials are proven to be earth conscious and have nearly zero carbon footprints. Yet, the modernist building sector with its insatiable drive for autonomy has relegated lessons from traditional building to being primitive. Moreover, the absence of objects of industrialisation has been defined as forming conformity with poverty. Hence, this research seeks to scientifically examine Adobe as one of the traditional building materials. In that vein, the environmental impact of the use of adobe will be studied. The study also purports to adequately examine the advantages and disadvantages of the use of adobe in modern construction. Methodologically, owing to the aims of this research, a qualitative computer based simulation approach is adopted. A typical traditional Adobe building in Louroujina—North Cyprus, will be simulated through a parametric computer based simulation done using Revit Architecture, with a green studio plug-in. Software acknowledge by the United State Department of Energy (DOE 2015). This simulation procedure models the carbon emission of the building and the yearly energy consumption. Summarily, this paper posits that the successful fusion of traditional building materials such as Adobe and modern design construct will not only give birth to earth conscious building, but will also be energy efficient. Moreover, it will be a substitute building material the building industry can adopt at as a contributing solution to the omniscient global warming malady.