A holistic design approach for sustainable building environment: A case study of an educational building

A building's safety can be ensured by its seismic performance and its environmental responsibility can be certified by life cycle assessment (LCA). A holistic building design approach ensuring both safety and sustainability assessment can exist when both are amalgamated. This study assimilates STAAD Pro, Insight 360, and one-click LCA tools to examine the seismic responses, energy efficacy, and global warming potential (GWP) of an institutional Reinforced Concrete (RC) building. To assess the earthquake performance under key influencing parameters such as response reduction factor (R), seismic zones, and soil type, several isometric RC building models are created. The response modification factor (R) significantly influences the base shear, inter-storey drift, lateral displacement, and steel consumption. This study concludes that seismic zone V (very severe risk) with the soft-soil model is most vulnerable to lateral forces and the seismic zone II (low risk) model with hard soil is the least susceptible. Buildings in seismic-zone V with soft soil entail 40% more steel than those in seismic zone II, due to the greater seismic demands. Moreover, using the Building Information Modeling (BIM) and LCA techniques, the same building model is examined for energy usage intensity (EUI) by combining different construction patterns and carbon footprint.