State-of-the-Art Studies of Green and Sustainable Building Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Submissions are invited to this Special Issue of Buildings on the topic “State-of-the-Art Studies of Green and Sustainable Building Materials”.

Globally, the construction industry is responsible for a huge environmental impact, and a significant role in this is played by the building sector. The building sector is responsible for 1/6 of global freshwater use, 1/4 of the wood harvest, and 2/5 of global energy use. While the traditional construction and operation practices of buildings can be partially blamed for this, another significant root cause for their excessive reliance on natural resources and non-renewables is the selection of unsustainable, non-green, and non-eco-friendly building materials. Almost every green building certification system, including LEED, BREEAM, and BEAM Plus, highly approves the use of green materials in a building. Buildings are built to last for decades; this implies that materials used in them must pass the test of time in addition to the test of sustainability.

Materials used in a building affect not only the occupants through their contribution to indoor air quality (IAQ), they also affect society at large by contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, use of natural resources, and by leading to the urban heat island effect if they are not well and sustainably selected. Green roofs and green walls are becoming increasingly popular for the role they can play in curbing the urban heat island effect. While building materials are being challenged for their embodied energy and GHG emissions, they also have a critical role to play in the operational life of buildings. To ensure energy efficiency and reduced demand for non-renewable energy, materials that reduce the heat losses across the building envelope are urgently needed. To ensure energy efficiency in cold climates, passive design techniques also offer the possibility of using certain materials for thermal mass. There are endless ways in which the choice of building materials affects the triple bottom line (i.e., people, profit, and planet).

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to:

• Green walls and roofs: rainwater management, benefits for natural habitat, and contribution towards urban heat island effect.
• Advances in building insulation materials.
• Revival of building insulation materials from vernacular practices.
• Use of thermal mass: heat study, energy savings, cost–benefit analysis.
• Healthy materials: studies investigating the effect of finishing materials on indoor air quality.
• Life cycle impact analysis of building materials.
• Consideration of modular prefab construction from the viewpoint of circular economy.
• Advances in structural materials with reduced environmental impact (e.g., green concrete).
• Advances in recycled materials.
• Construction waste utilization from the viewpoint of circular economy.
• Advances in phase-change materials for application in buildings.
• The use of bamboo, precast concrete slabs, cork, straw bales, plant-based polyurethane rigid foam, hempcrete, mycelium, ferrock, timbercrete, and terrazzo for building and construction.

Dr. Tayyab Ahmad
Dr. Amos Darko
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainable building materials
• green building materials 
• insulation materials
• healthy materials
• life cycle impact analysis
• embedded energy
• embedded CO2 emissions
• natural materials
• adobe wall
• modular construction
• green roof
• green concrete
• recycled materials
• waste utilization
• phase-change material