Simplicity of sustainability: a Taiwanese Approach

Sustainability is defined as the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Contemporary, the sustainable development has considered in many areas, such as waste and recycling, energy efficiency, water consumption, building design, emission, indoor environmental quality, alternative transport, landscaping, and management. Most of the modern sustainable buildings aimed to use complicated design and techniques to achieve sustainability, such as renewable energy, energy efficient products, computerized building information management systems (BIMs), automation and optimization controls, water recycling techniques, etc. However, in Taiwan, the Green Building Council uses a different sustainability measurement tools called EEWH (Ecology, Energy saving, Waste reduction and Health) to encourage simplicity of sustainability. This paper will first introduce the four fundamental principles of this approach and its nine measurement indicators. Hence, this paper presents two successful case studies in Taiwan on how they achieved sustainability using simplistic techniques. These case studies are Beitou library in Taipei and Yilan County Hall in Yilan city.