Building materials with sustainable and reusable characteristics in the State of Espírito Santo (Brazil)

Abstract

The activity of specifying a new building material is an act of great responsibility, because beyond performance it is important to consider the environmental, economical and social impacts. Thus, and considering the role of education in the training of architects, a research was developed bringing together students and tutors of two classes of the Architecture and Urbanism course at Federal University of Espirito Santo. The goal is to verify the existence and use of building materials known as "sustainable", available on the market of Espírito Santo (Brazil). The methodology addressed two issues: 1. The provision of market research in several cities and shops of building materials, and 2. Visits to buildings. The research tools were a semistructured questionnaire?? and a photographic survey. The results showed that most of the buildings that use sustainable materials are of commercial use, and that due to ignorance of the potential of these materials by architects and consumers, they are not applied on a largescale. We identified three types of users who use the materials studied: 1. "Environmentally conscious" (Used by choice), 2. "Creative by necessity" (used as alternative situation) 3. "Environmentally chic" (adopted for "fashion" issues).