Achieving a zero carbon design

With the increasing of people’s awareness about environmental protection, it’s more and more needed to design buildings with positive influence to environment.

In this assignment, I tried to demonstrate how a design can become a zero, or near-zero energy building. The main goal of my design is to reduce the environmental impact of the building ( and of the occupants ) and contribute positively to the environment, with reasonable and detailed proofs. As a result, some requirements about achieving zero carbon design are below:

• Thermal comfort should be achieved in all seasons, through all rooms in the dewlling
• Minimal reliance on artificial heating and cooling operations
• Minimum of life cycle energy
• 100% self-sufficiency of electricity through the whole building
• 90% self-sufficiency through reuse and recovery of rainwater and grey water
• On-site water management.