Sustainable, resilient and healthy built environments: An integrated approach

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Built environment, as the main habitat of the modern human, encompasses a complex mixture of viable and dead organisms (known as indoor microbiome), which can not only affect occupants' wellbeing and productivity but also deteriorate different parts of the buildings, leading to undesirable changes in the materials' structural properties. In addition, the built environment is accountable for part of problems associated to climate change, due to being a principal engine for resource extraction and high amount of CO2 emissions by the building sector. Recently, green building designs and use of novel bio-sourced green materials for non-structural and structural indoor applications have increased as an effort towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the emerging green materials are naturally biodegradable and there is no clear indication as to how their mutual interaction with built environment microbiome would affect the structural integrity of such sustainable buildings and the indoor air quality. My long-term vision is to devise new understandings and methods for better design of healthy, resilient, and sustainable buildings by integrating factors underlying dynamics of built environment ecology in response to climate change, and their effect on the environmental performance of emerging green building materials. In the short-term, through this Discovery Program, I aim to investigate the effect of meteorological factors on dynamics of indoor air quality and on microbial communities in offices with plants (biophilic design) and without plants (non-biophilic design). In addition, I aim to better understand the seasonal effect of indoor microbiome on deterioration of physical and mechanical properties of select green building materials for use in both biophilic and non-biophilic spaces under the increasing impact of natural incidences such as flooding as a result of climate change. Subsequently, I also aim to assess the performance of laboratory-scale genetically enhanced natural fibres against microbial degradation for future potential applications. Namely, the latter aims to develop a novel technique that could fundamentally make the susceptible green building materials more resilient against microbial growth and metabolic activity (as the main cause of biodegradation). Completion of the proposed Discovery program will contribute to Canada's leadership in the design of healthy, resilient, and sustainable buildings, which can eventually enable more optimal use of plants and microbial-resistant materials by designers and architects, while decreasing potential long-term economic losses due to the climate change.