Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Eksen Dokuz Eylül University Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, cilt.4, sa.1, ss.170-188, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)
Industrial and chemical activities are the reason of the unlimited usage of limited natural resources, environmental issues with important positive consequences such as melting glaciers in the polar regions, ozone layer depletion, water pollution, global warming are worsened since the industrial revolution. For this reason, developing new approaches that can solve the problems related to environmental and human health is needed and the production of energy-efficient, recyclable and environmentally friendly materials become important. Sustainability, which has been referred to as the most effective solution to these problems in recent years, is defined as a set of approaches that require not forgetting that while the earth's resources are rapidly depleting, the existing resources will be needed not only for today's but also for the next generations to survive. Sustainable development principles, their application to the building production process, support reducing environmental impacts, waste generation and resource consumption. The built environment efforts to minimize the negative effects caused by buildings, since it becomes one of the factors of natural resources consumption. Therefore, starting from the design stage, supporting the development of projects in this direction is targeted by creating green building certification systems. Within the frame of this study, LEED certification system, one of the widely used green building rating system all around the world and the natural resource utilization level of the LEED certified projects will be studied. This paper aims to use the case study method to evaluate sustainable material and building element usage. For this purpose, 20 office building projects that have received LEED certificates in Turkey is examined. The scores of the projects from the criteria under the material and resources heading of the LEED certification system were analysed. Based on the results obtained, sustainable materials and construction elements usage is insufficient even in projects that have received a high level of LEED certificate.