Eco-design - A marker of building reengineering

Over the past fifteen years, the environmental issue in the construction field has essentially been reflected in the flowering of labels, the existence of which French professionals have only recently realized, in conjunction with the completion of tertiary operations mobilizing international investors. For example, some business centers have had to be certified to HQE, LEED and BREAM standards, all at the same time. These are all unique and cultural approaches to the treatment of the built environment.

This profusion is counterproductive and does not support the efforts needed to commit the sector to real progress. The need for a common approach is now recognized by most French and international professionals.

The English, American and French approaches show that the proponents of these certifications have, at different levels, all come to the need to measure the environmental performance of buildings using a life-cycle analysis (or LCA). This convergence has recently been echoed by the work of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), which advocates this approach.

But this analysis is in fact only the instrumented part of a more global approach: eco-design, i.e. mastering the environmental dimension of any project.

First defined in industrial circles in the 1980s, it was recommended at European level a decade later ("Integrated Product Policy" IPP program), before finding a confidential path in the 2000s.

In France, eco-design has asserted itself by seeking to make a credible environmental approach tangible, because it can be measured, and all the more so since the EQUER LCA software dedicated to construction was so convincing.

So, for a given project, eco-design boiled down to reducing its potential environmental impact.

We'll look at four stages here, to provide an initial guide and encourage you to generalize your practice:

• reminder of the "environmental" context leading to new methodological specifications;

• presentation of principles that seek to meet the above expectations;

• description of the application modes in each of its fields or construction scales ;

• planned developments, some of which are already underway.