Table Of ContentGreen Energy and Technology
Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada Editor
Energetic
Characterization
of Building
Evolution
A Multi-perspective Evaluation in
the Andean Region of Ecuador
Green Energy and Technology
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Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada
Editor
Energetic Characterization
of Building Evolution
A Multi-perspective Evaluation in the Andean
Region of Ecuador
Editor
Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada
Universidad Católica de Cuenca
Cuenca, Ecuador
ISSN 1865-3529 ISSN 1865-3537 (electronic)
Green Energy and Technology
ISBN 978-3-031-21597-1 ISBN 978-3-031-21598-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21598-8
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Foreword
The world is facing a global warming crisis, euphemistically referred to as climate
change. This extremely serious situation for the perpetuation of life on earth as we
know it today is largely due to the problems created by the fossil fuel-based economic
and energy model, which originated with the industrial revolution and intensified at
the beginning of the twentieth century.
The implications of this model affect how we travel, produce things, air-condition
our living spaces, and construct our buildings. The latter part is the one that has
the largest hidden and discreet burden of energy consumption on the impact on the
environment. Buildings represented 28% of global CO emissions in 2016. This
2
percentage is related to direct emissions, and the energy consumption of buildings.
Nonetheless, an extra 11% was produced by indirect emissions, namely, those related
to the construction processes and materials used.1
Energy-saving issues have been extensively developed from the architectural point
of view, by implementing standards that require the establishment of minimum insu-
lation parameters for envelopes and maximum consumption of facilities. Neverthe-
less, the ecological footprint of the materials we use to crystallize projects is not,
for now, a priority issue. We must bear in mind that the life cycle of a material
has an environmental impact in the extraction of the raw material, in its transfor-
mation, transport, application, and ultimately, in the waste management that it will
entail when the building reaches the end of its days. Thus, both the material and
the construction system are an issue of tremendous relevance when it comes to a
comprehensive analysis of the sustainability of a building.
As of the industrial era and—later on—the dependence on oil, the concept of
construction has clearly changed worldwide. This has led to changes in construc-
tion systems, new materials, and technologies aimed at reducing construction times
and improving the developer’s profitability indexes. Furthermore, after the Brunt-
land report in 1987, building and habitability require new construction conditions to
reduce thermal discomfort in interior spaces. Once again, this has resulted in the inclu-
sion of new, much more industrialized materials which, although they require more
1 “Global Status Report 2017”, developed by UN Environment.
v
vi Foreword
energy for their production, seek to reduce the energy demand for air-conditioning.
Therefore, the trend in the change of materials in recent decades has been to reduce
the energy demand of buildings at the expense of increasing the energy spent in the
construction systems employed.
These new materials with an energetic and industrialized approach have initially
emerged in high latitudes such as Europe or North America, and applied, of course,
to their own economic, environmental, and mainly climatic context. However, other
countries have imported and adopted these construction typologies without consid-
ering the local context of each country, which may result in an energy expenditure on
materials while not contributing to the reduction of the demand for air-conditioning.
This book aims to shed some light on the subject of materiality and its relationship
with sustainability, focusing its discourse on Ecuador, mainly in the Andean region of
this country. Based on this concept, a multipurpose discussion has been raised about
the constructive changes that buildings in this region have undergone. The Energy
Characterization of the Evolution of Buildings. A Multi-perspective Evaluation in
the Andean Region of Ecuador, as we have named this work, gathers the implications
of the change of materials in Ecuador and this region in the last decades, through an
energetic-thermal look, and at the same time highlights the cause-effect phenomenon
in the economic field, as well as the technical-sustainable learning that can be acquired
from the constructive genuineness of past architectural structures.
Ultimately, this paper ambitions to characterize the constructive evolution of the
building in this region, from an experimental-scientific approach and, at the same
time, to establish more conceptual-theoretical viewpoints.
From the experimental point of view, the findings on the quality of the construction
systems used in Ecuador show surprising results: we build in a more expensive, less
sustainable, and less comfortable manner than it was done 100 years ago. In Andean
architecture today, fashion, the reproduction of foreign models, or the pressures of
international lobbies for construction materials predominate.
Conceptually speaking, a reflection on the fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions of
materials is proposed, regarding them as atmosphere generators, memory containers,
and opportunities to establish transcendental connections with culture and the envi-
ronment. The retrospective look at vernacular architecture reveals constructive
dynamics with an intrinsic attachment to sustainability and is separated by an abyss
from current constructions.
This book is meant to be a stimulus for the seasoned and sensitive reader who
devours it, leading him or her to irremediably reassess what I build and how I do it,
from a material as well as a morphological perspective. We hope from the editorial
team that it will be a starting point for responsible and sustainable reflection on
the materiality of the things around us, both for students, architects, engineers, and
builders, as well as for public and private entities and the general public.
Foreword vii
The processes to make a better world are small and may seem trivial, but mountains
and deserts are crossed one step at a time. We firmly believe that a grain of sand is
the foundation for immeasurable change.
Sevilla, España Guillermo Casado-López
Cuenca, Ecuador Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada
Contents
The Construction Evolution and Their Energectic Impact
in Andean Region Buildings ........................................ 1
Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada and Ana Torres-Avilés
The Constructive Evolution of the Envelope. The Impact on Indoor
Thermal Conditions in Andean Regions ............................. 49
Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada and Ana Torres-Avilés
Construction Development, Economic Evolution,
and Environmental Impact in Ecuador .............................. 79
Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada, Tatiana Sánchez-Quezada,
and Gilda Vélez-Romero
Constructive Sincerity and Bioclimatic Architecture .................. 101
Guillermo Casado López
Materials from a Heritage Perspective ............................... 117
María del Cisne Aguirre Ullauri
and Edison Maximiliano Castillo Carchipulla
ix
About the Editor
Jefferson Eloy Torres-Quezada has a doctorate in architecture and graduated from
the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), obtaining the Cum Laude mention
and the international doctorate. He has collaborated as Assistant Professor of the
Official MBArch Master Program of the UPC, and as a researcher of the AiEM
group since 2015 in Barcelona. He is currently a teacher-researcher at the Catholic
University of Cuenca. He registers several scientific articles (Q1–Q4) and partici-
pation in different international congresses as an exhibitor. He is the winner of the
Extraordinary Prize of DOCTORAL THESIS of the UPC in 2019, and Principal
Investigator of the Catholic University of Cuenca. In addition, he has made an inter-
national stay at Keio University in Tokyo-Japan, where he was part of the research
laboratory of the School of Science and Technology. His research has focused on the
energy efficiency of buildings, and sustainable urban and architectural design. As
an architect he has participated in different projects of a public and private nature,
acquiring experience both in the field of design and construction since 2010.
xi
