Sustainable Green Buildings Construction In Urban Enviroments

Abstract

Human beings have an associate connection with our environment by physical, mental, emotional and spiritual means. This connection can create a vibrant life that people can thrive from in every aspect. This thesis intends to provide a design of a retreat center for meditating with healing spaces. In addition to daily spiritual activities, the reason of such retreat center is for clients to temporarily leave behind the usual diversion they all face for a time – long enough to contemplate relaxation and for an inward change to happen. The built environment implies that physical surroundings have a direct relationship with how a person reacts and behaves. The built environment and the spaces it create should not be seen as only a physical surrounding, but as an interconnection between spirituality, architecture, and sense of place. This study aims to integrate green building materials to the retreat center. Data were gathered through an exploration of the research, supported by documentary analysis from site visits and observation guides. The outcome of the architectural feature and character was identified that would reflect a retreat center. The green building materials are carefully filtered out by identifying which are attainable and which can be integrated. The culmination of all these variables leads to a design of a proposed retreat center integrating green building materials.