What can a special issue on sustainable and healthy housing contribute to the widespread ongoing debate? Well, there is a need for good examples, for successful strategies and for “stepping stones”, meaning that better practices are based on acquired experience. Also, the young generation...

The Dutch government intends to sharpen the current energy performance standard of the national building regulations for new buildings (Energy Performance Coefficient) step by step to an energy-neutral level by 2020. In their climate policies, municipalities are preparing to meet this level for...

Energy labels in buildings are awarded based on theoretical gas and electricity consumption based on dwelling's physical characteristics. Prior to this research, a large-scale study was conducted in The Netherlands comparing theoretical energy use with data on actual energy use revealing...

This paper deals with teaching environmental sustainability to students in higher education, focusing on the sustainability of buildings and the built environment and more specifically on energy. Integrating sustainability issues into the curricula of engineering education proves to be a big...

The energy saving potential of the building stock is large and considered to be the most cost efficient to contribute to the CO2 reduction ambitions. Severe governmental policies steering on reducing the energy use seem essential to stimulate and enforce the improvement of the energy performance...

Urban renewal is a multifaceted activity that involves numerous actors, software, and types of data. Design communication tools play an important role in this process. Visual information helps to outline, understand, and choose sustainable solutions for problems in the design, while visual tools...