Challenges and Future Development Paths of Low Carbon Building Design: A Review

Excessive carbon emissions are causing the problems of global warming and the greenhouse effect, which urgently need to be controlled worldwide. It is crucial to reduce the carbon emissions of the construction industry as it is one of the main sources. Carbon is generated at all phases of the building life cycle, including in material production, building design, and building operation and maintenance. Notably, building design has various extents of influence on carbon emissions at each phase, for which a low carbon method urgently needs to be explored. This paper aims to summarize the current status of building design through literature review considering standard systems, carbon emission calculations, and building design optimization. The challenges of building design are as follows: lack of (1) a comprehensive standard system considering different factors, (2) lack of a carbon emission calculation method for the design phase, and a (3) no real-time optimization model aiming at carbon reduction. The path of “standard−calculation−prediction−optimization” (SCPO) for future building design is proposed to address these challenges. It takes standard system as the framework, the carbon calculation method as the foundation, the prediction model as the theory, and the low carbon building as the objective. This paper can provide theoretical guidance for low carbon building design.