Sustainable Housing: A study of eastern and western approach to sustainability

Abstract

This thesis report is about a comparison between a western approach to sustainable housing and an eastern approach to it. Obviously not only California has an energy crisis. Every corner of the world is talking about sustainability, but people practise it in different ways. In the western world, people tend to be precise; they try to figure out how each strategy contributes to the whole energy conservation, they use computers to calculate the percentage of savings. At the same time the eastern world is using luo pan (an antique tool to indicate time or space) and intuition to achieve life energy, which is called Qi in China. Eastern theory is quite systematic and different from the western one. It believes everything is interrelated. It is set up through thousands of years of practice, it is kind of an experience -based system, so it doesn't sound as logical and explainable as the western method. But it worked and it is working. The purpose of this thesis is to make a comparison between the two, to see how each method works in the same design, which is in the same site located in Tucson.I divided this thesis into two parts; the first part is the eastern approach to sustainable housing. I explained this approach by doing a Fengshui design at a site in Tucson. To help the readers better understand the design, I put in some Fengshui background knowledge and some real Fengshui cases along with their explanations. There are more methods in Fengshui practice; the Fengshui background knowledge covers only the methods I used in this design. Further practice knowledge or experience is available from Fengshui masters. The second part is the western approach to sustainable housing. It is achieved by using six individual strategies. I used the Calpas 3.0 computer program to calculate how each strategy contributes to the energy conservation, and the total amount of combined savings is provided. In the conclusion, I discuss the comparison of the results that come out from the different methods. In such a way, the reader of this thesis report will have a clear idea how the eastern and western cultures differ and where they are similar with each other.