One of the technical papers authored by Architect Shafique Rahman & Redowan Kabir Kaushik, was presented at the seminar held on Arcasia Forum20 Dhaka19.
One of the technical papers titled “Sustainability of Building Material, a Review of Burnt Clay Brick in the Context of Bangladesh” authored by Architect Shafique Rahman & Redowan Kabir Kaushik, was presented at the seminar held on the occasion of Arcasia Forum 20 held in Dhaka on 3rd and 4th November 2019 organized by the Institute of Architects, Bangladesh (IAB)
Abstract: Minimizing energy consumption has become a primary concern in every aspect of human civilization today. Buildings, building materials, and building components are significant to consume both renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy. Nearly 40 % of global energy annually is expended in the building’s life cycle stages, such as production and procurement of building materials, construction, operational energy, and demolition. To mitigate the energy embedded into a building, it is fundamental to evaluate less energy-intensive technologies for the construction, as well as low environmental impact building materials. However, the assessment of the environmental sustainability of the same material is not comparable in every context. Based on the production technology, method of procurement, and type of energy used in the production; the environmental footprint of any material should be different in every different region. The aim of this research is to appraise the environmental sustainability of the most prominent building material in South Asian countries, especially based on the context of Bangladesh. In South East Asia the most used building material is Burnt Clay Brick. With the high rate of infrastructural development, the production of brick is increasing every year. In Bangladesh, about 4,500 brick industries are in operation, producing about 9 billion bricks per year. Toward a sustainable future, it is important to assess the environmental impact and embodied energy of this widely used material in the South Asian context. This paper investigates the EE, water consumption, emissions, and environmental footprint of burnt clay brick based on the LCA (Cradle to Gate) methodology and a program-based assessment in Simapro 8.1. A comparison between previous research and the current study apprises the feasibility of burnt clay brick in this region, in terms of environmental sustainability.