The building sector is responsible for extensive resource consumption and waste generation, resulting in high pressure on the environment. A way to potentially mitigate this is by including environmental considerations during building design through the concept known as eco-design. Despite the multiple available approaches of eco-design, the latter is not easily achieved in the building sector. The objective of this paper is to identify and discuss what barriers are currently hindering the implementation of eco-design in the building sector and by which measures building designers can include environmental considerations in their design process. Through a systematic literature review, several barriers to implementation were identified, the main ones being lack of suitable legislation, lack of knowledge amongst building designers, and lack of suitable tools for designers to use. Furthermore, two specific tools were identified that allow the inclusion of environmental consideration in building design, along with nine design strategies providing qualitative guidance on how to potentially minimize energy and material consumption, as well as waste generation. This paper contributes a holistic overview of the major barriers to and existing tools and method for the eco-design of buildings, and provides guidance for both future research and practice.

The application of eco‐design principles in the building sector is considered a promising way to mitigate its substantial environmental impacts. However, quantitative evidence for this mitigation potential is lacking. The objective of this study was to quantify the environmental performance of diverse eco‐design strategies when applied to the building sector. A macroscale model capable of simulating the future demand for housing and related material flows within the urban building stock was developed based on an existing building stock model. These material flows were used to build inventories for a consequential life cycle assessment and, in turn, to quantify the potential environmental consequences of introducing eco‐design strategies in the building sector, assessed across 16 impact categories. Model outputs have a high level of uncertainty but are still useful for decision‐making, given the model's simplicity and transparency. The main results show that impact reductions can be obtained from specific uses of wood and wooden products, for example, when used for the walls in high‐rise buildings, whereas using hempcrete for partition walls increases the impact. Although the use of adaptability or disassembly strategies can reduce impacts, this pay‐off can only be obtained after a long period of implementation. In summary, the present study provides new quantitative insights into the ability of eco‐design strategies to mitigate environmental impacts in the building sector.

Purpose: The building sector is responsible for substantial adverse environmental impact and vast material consumption. Eco-design of buildings is a potential mitigation strategy; however, quantitative evidence of the mitigation potential is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to quantify the environmental consequences of applying multiple combinations of various eco-design strategies to a building, thereby providing new insights into eco-designing buildings and potential focal points to mitigate the environmental impacts of the building sector. Method: A multi-step approach was used to quantify the environmental consequences of conjointly applying various eco-design strategies to a building. In this approach, combinations of the eco-design strategies were applied to eight different components of a case building, such as interior walls and floor separations. Life cycle inventories were compiled for the original building design and for when the combinations of eco-design strategies were applied. The inventories were used as input for a consequential LCA, quantifying the potential environmental impacts across 16 impact categories. The impacts were then summed up to represent the total impact of a building, resulting in almost 3 million different design scenarios, and thereby environmental impact scenarios. The results were interpreted using statistical analysis such as linear regression. Results and discussion: Results show that to minimize adverse environmental impacts construction materials should be used in the following prioritized order, biotic materials, inert natural materials, inorganic materials, and finally reclaimed materials. The fact that reclaimed materials are the least favorable for impact reductions goes against the findings of previous studies. However, this is because previous studies apply attributional modeling, while this study appliesy consequential modeling. The results indicate that the impact category climate change, can be a good proxy for the overall impact reduction across categories. However, the results also show that the distribution of the impacts for the design scenarios differs greatly across the assessed impact categories, which would not have been identified if only focusing on climate change. Conclusions: Noticeable impact reductions are observed when the same combination of eco-design strategies is applied to all building components; however, the greatest possible reductions are noticed when applying specific combinations to specific building components. We therefore recommended that building designers differentiate the design and material used for different types of building components. Furthermore, LCA practitioners should be included in the design process, to ensure that the proposed solutions contribute to mitigating adverse environment impacts.