What makes Buildings Sustainable?

If we follow Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – what are the needs of a human being?

What do we need from our buildings?
What are the most basic things we all need from our buildings? We need a shelter, we need protection, we need stability and we need utilities like water, electricity, roads, infrastructure. These are our basic necessities.

Once these necessities are met, what do we need from our Buildings
After our necessities are met, we need comfort. We want visual comfort, we want day light in the right proportion, we want thermal comfort, we want acoustic comfort, we want good air quality.

After our comforts are met, what do we need from our Buildings
Luxuries. What are Luxuries? I have just put this in the Category of Luxury but this is what all of us “need”. We need beauty, we need art, we need Inspiration, we need our environment to be products of Artistic and Scientific excellence. We need technology. We need our homes and our offices to be smart. Technology driven. We need greenery and landscape around – we want to integrate greenery with our homes. We need communities – we want homes that bind us together – with a circle around us.

These are our three levels of needs – What we need from our buildings.

This is what a human being needs.

What does the planet need from the building?

• Planet needs resource efficiency.
• Planet needs zero waste buildings.
• Planet needs net zero water buildings.
• Planet needs rain water harvesting.  
• Planets needs solid waste management, waste water treatment, energy efficiency, net zero energy buildings.

When we combine what the human needs with what the planet needs is when we have a sustainable building.