Friendly Materials: green materials for architecture

Pollution, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability are the themes that occupy the attention of the public and politicians every day. However, while there are systems that measure the quality of the air that we breathe in cities, the same problems in enclosed spaces are the subject of much less, or even no attention.

The problem of indoor pollution appears extremely urgent when we consider that we spend 90% of our time in an enclosed space and that according to recent studies, pollution inside homes or workspaces reaches levels up to 5 times higher than outdoors. Taking this issue as a starting point, the PMMT (Forward Thinking Healthcare Architecture)architecture studio has developed a method to analyse materials and systems of construction, promoted on their recently created website www.friendlymaterials.com. This is based on the studio’s 20 years of experience in planning healthy care and work spaces and advanced healthcare systems. The PMMT method takes into account the impact of various materials on human health, allowing an objective evaluation and giving points to materials. As a consequence, the healthiness of an environment is assessed through an algorithm on the basis of points given to different components, products and construction systems, combined with other factors that can influence the quality of an indoor space. Architects can verify and evaluate the health of indoor spaces and suggest improvements for each case.

(Agnese Bifulco)

www.friendlymaterials.com

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