Research On Building Niche And Its Evaluation Methods

Promoting the harmonious coexistence between buildings and the eco-environment to realize the sustainable development of construction activities is an important task faced by the discipline of construction and management in the new era.As one of the important theories in the field of ecology,niche has been extended into the research and application of architecture discipline.The theory of building niche not only provides an emerging research field to study the relationship between construction activities and the eco-environment,but also plays a significant guiding role in promoting the improvement of building functions and environments.The study of building niche theory and its evaluation methods is of great theoretical and practical significance.This paper systematically studies the theory and evaluation methods of building niche.The main results are as follows:(1)Compositions and characteristic attributes of the building niche were proposed in the paper.The essential factors to form building niche were analyzed after the niche was introduced into the construction field.They include the ecological factors that affecting buildings,the ecosystems for buildings' existence and the life features of buildings.The building niche was defined and analyzed along with its attribute characteristics and basic types.The hypervolume of building niche was proposed basing on the discussion of dimensional compositions and resource spectrum.Meanwhile,the applicability of building niche in the environmental assessment of engineering projects was analyzed.Afterwards,the article explored the evolutionary path among the basic niche,the actual niche and the potential niche of buildings.The changing paradigm of building niche in terms of dimensions was also discussed.(2)The article discussed relevant mechanism and evaluation elements of building niche.Further action mechanism have been studied on the theory of building niche.They include the suitability,the breadth,the state and uptrend,the expansion and compression,the overlap and separation as well as the construction effect.Afterwards the application ways of building niche in environmental evaluation of building projects were proposed.It was suggested that the matching relationship between ecological factors of buildings and ecological environment resources could be analyzed from aspects of buidlings' influence and adaptability to the eco-environment.(3)A method for environmental impact assessment of buildings was established by using the building niche theory and the emergy-ecological footprint model.Through identifying flows of ecological factors that interlink the space of building niche and the building eco-environment,the diagram of key emergy flows for each stage of building life cycle was drawn.Then the analysis and evaluation model of the dynamic energy in the building ecosystem was constructed based on the emergy ecological footprint method to evaluate the ecological impact load of a building on the environment.(4)An evaluation model was established on the adaptability of building environment by using the theory of building niche.The characteristic vectors of building niche were suggested,which are composed of five key categories.Simultaneously the classifications of ecological factors for each dimension,the evaluation index system and each index's evaluation criterias of building niche were analyzed and constructed.Afterwards,the measurement and evaluation models for building niche's breadth,overlap and fitness were established.They could comprehensively evaluate the adaptability of buildings to the ecoenvironment from three aspects including the building's ability to use ecological factors,the ecological relationship between buildings and the suitability of buildings to the ecoenvironment.(5)A case study was used to verify the applicability of the evaluation methods for building niche.Buildings in a residential area were taken as the objects.Through field investigations and status analysis of eco-factors which affected buildings,the article measured the load impact of buildings on the eco-environment.Aferthat the suitability relationship between buildings and the eco-environment was evaluated.Meanwhile the competition and sharing of ecological factors among buildings on each dimension were discussed.Additionally,the strategies to improve the building function were proposed,which could adjust the relationship between buildings and the eco-environment.