Burgos, Spain

Energy Efficiency and Sustainability in Engineering and Architecture

Eficiencia Energética y Sostenibilidad en Ingeniería y Arquitectura

Table of contents

⇑Energy Efficiency and Sustainability in Engineering and Architecture at UBU

Language: Spanish Studies in Spanish
Subject area: physical science, environment
University website: www.ubu.es
Type: PhD/Doctoral programme
Academic degree: Doctor

⇑Definitions and quotes

Architecture
Architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings or any other structures. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.
Energy
In physics, energy is the quantitative property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or to heat, the object. Energy is a conserved quantity; the law of conservation of energy states that energy can be converted in form, but not created or destroyed. The SI unit of energy is the joule, which is the energy transferred to an object by the work of moving it a distance of 1 metre against a force of 1 newton.
Engineering
Engineering is the creative application of science, mathematical methods, and empirical evidence to the innovation, design, construction, operation and maintenance of structures, machines, materials, devices, systems, processes, and organizations. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application. See glossary of engineering.
Sustainability
Sustainability (from 'sustain' and 'ability') is the process of change, in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. The organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the following interconnected domains: environment, economic and social. Sub-domains of sustainable development have been considered also: cultural, technological and political. Sustainable development, is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Brundtland Report for the World Commission on Environment and Development (1992) introduced the term of sustainable development.
Engineering
Only among those who were engaged in a particular activity did their language remain unchanged; so, for in­stance, there was one for all the architects, one for all the carriers of stones, one for all the stone-breakers, and so on for all the different opera­tions. As many as were the types of work involved in the enterprise, so many were the languages by which the human race was fragmented; and the more skill required for the type of work, the more rudimentary and barbaric the language they now spoke. But the holy tongue remained to those who had neither joined in the project nor praised it, but instead, thoroughly disdaining it, had made fun of the builders' stupidity.
Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, Chapter VII
Engineering
The metalworker encourages the goldsmith,
and the one who smooths with the hammer
spurs on the one who strikes the anvil.
One says of the welding, “It is good.”
The other nails down the idol so it will not topple.
Isaiah 41:7 NIV
Engineering
There are two laws discrete,
Not reconciled,—
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing
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