Improvement of Environmental and Energetic Performance of Social Housing in Medellin by Using Modified Ceramic Bricks

Abstract

Housing seeks to cover people’s basic needs by attending to social, cultural, security, health and wellbeing functions. The State is responsible of ensuring access to housing. Construction, operation and demolition of houses generates significant environmental impacts that reduce environmental and energetic performance. Performance could be optimized along the life-cycle of the construction by adopting principles of sustainable construction, which in the context of the low-income housing of Medellin, have begun to be demanded by their inhabitants as a matter of savings for public services, thermal comfort and quality of life. This research article shows that the use of modified ceramic brick is an opportunity to minimize consumption of nonrenewable natural resources such as clay and coal –traditionally used in housing manufacture, as well as to recover, recycle and reintegrate alternative resources from secondary sources such as urban solid wastes. This does not only reduce carbon footprint of the low-income houses, but also generates externalities which stand out in innovation and technological development, new industrial processes and business models, greater profitability and enterprise competitiveness, social responsibility, minimization of environmental impacts such as air pollution, and effects on public health that are associated.