Construction giant who built Khufu’s pyramid, also known as Cheops, 4500 years ago has long attracted the attention of scientists. 137-meter-high pyramid is composed of about 3 million pieces of stone, each weighing 2.5 tons.

Well how do they lift heavy stones that? Archaeologists and scientists of other disciplines to solve problems because there is not much secret evidence left by the Egyptians. During this time, experts believe the pyramid of Khufu was built from its main building in the middle and then to the side to form the slopes or build a side slope one by one.

However, after doing research for eight years, architect Jean-Pierre Houdin believes the other. Of the three-dimensional computer model that successfully programmed seen that the pyramid was built from the ground up. At first the lower slopes built to a height of 43 meters. Then proceed with building construction in the upper slope to reach the top.

Houdin also claimed to be able to explain other puzzles how to put the King Rooms are constructed of 5 pieces of granite weighing 60 tons at space pyramid. Based on the pyramid form a high and wide, he believed the Egyptians use the same heavy stones to raise it with a kind of pulley.

With these techniques, to build a tomb for the king, he estimates that it takes only 4,000 people. This estimate is much smaller than the predictions of experts previously estimated at 100 thousand people. Houdin plans to prove his theory by testing directly without damaging the pyramid.

Green building brings together a vast array of practices and techniques to reduce and ultimately eliminate the impacts of buildings on the environment and human health. It often emphasizes taking advantage of renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through passive solar, active solar, and photovoltaic techniques and using plants and trees through green roofs, rain gardens, and for reduction of rainwater run-off. Many other techniques, such as using packed gravel or permeable concrete instead of conventional concrete or asphalt to enhance replenishment of ground water, are used as well.

While the practices, or technologies, employed in green building are constantly evolving and may differ from region to region, there are fundamental principles that persist from which the method is derived: Siting and Structure Design Efficiency, Energy Efficiency, Water Efficiency, Materials Efficiency, Indoor Environmental Quality Enhancement, Operations and Maintenance Optimization, and Waste and Toxics Reduction. The essence of green building is an optimization of one or more of these principles. Also, with the proper synergistic design, individual green building technologies may work together to produce a greater cumulative effect.

On the aesthetic side of green architecture or sustainable design is the philosophy of designing a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site. There are several key steps in designing sustainable buildings: specify ‘green’ building materials from local sources, reduce loads, optimize systems, and generate on-site renewable energy.

Although new technologies are constantly being developed to complement current practices in creating greener structures, the common objective is that green buildings are designed to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:

* Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources
* Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity
* Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation

A similar concept is natural building, which is usually on a smaller scale and tends to focus on the use of natural materials that are available locally. Other related topics include sustainable design and green architecture. Sustainability may be defined as meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Green building does not specifically address the issue of the retrofitting existing homes.

A 2009 report by the U.S. General Services Administration found 12 sustainably designed buildings cost less to operate and have excellent energy performance. In addition, occupants were more satisfied with the overall building than those in typical commercial buildings.

Prehistoric and primitive architecture is an early stage of this dynamic. Then the man becomes more developed and knowledge began to take shape through oral traditions and practices, architecture evolved into a skill. At this stage there was the trial process, improvisation, or imitation to become a successful outcome. An architect was not an important figure, he merely continued the tradition. Vernacular architecture was born of such approaches and is still practiced in many parts of the world.

Human settlements in the past is essentially rural. Then arises the surplus production, so that rural communities develop into urban society. The complexity and typology of buildings increased. Technology development of public facilities such as roads and bridges were developed. Typologies of new buildings such as schools, hospitals, and recreational facilities also appear. Religious architecture remained a vital part in society. Architectural styles evolve, and writings on architecture began to appear. Writings into a collection of rules (canon) to be followed, especially in the construction of religious architecture. Examples of this canon include works written by Vitruvius, or Vaastu Shastra of ancient India. In the period of Classical and Medieval Europe, the building is not the work of individual architects, but professional associations (guilds) is formed by the artisan / specialist building skills to organize the project.

During the Enlightenment, the humanities and the emphasis on the individual becomes more important than religion, and a new beginning in the architecture. Development assigned to individual architects – Michaelangelo, Brunelleschi, Leonardo da Vinci – and the cult of personality began. But at that time, there is no clear division of tasks between artists, architects, and engineers or other fields related work. At this stage, an artist can design a bridge because it is still counting on the structure of a general nature.

Along with the incorporation of knowledge from various disciplines (eg engineering), and the emergence of new building materials and technologies, an architect shift its focus from technical aspects of building toward aesthetics. Then the rise of the “gentry architect” who usually dealt with bouwheer (client) is rich and concentrated on the visual elements in the form of referring to historical examples. In the 19th century, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in France to train prospective architects to create sketches and drawings emphasize beautiful without context.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution opened the door for public consumption, so the aesthetic to a size that can be achieved even by the middle class. Formerly ornate aesthetic products are limited in scope expensive skills, become affordable through mass production. Products such does not have the beauty and honesty in the expression of a production process.

Discontent with the situation so early in the 20th century gave birth to the ideas that underlie modern architecture, among others, the Deutscher Werkbund (formed 1907) which produces machine-made objects with better quality is the point of birth of the profession in the field of industrial design. After that, the Bauhaus school (established in Germany in 1919) refused to past history and chose to see architecture as a synthesis of art, skill, and technology.

When Modern architecture began to be practiced, it is the vanguard of a movement with moral, philosophical, and aesthetic. Truth sought by rejecting history and turning to the functions that gave birth to forms. The architect then became a prominent figure and was dubbed the “master”. Later modern architecture into the scope of mass production because of its simplicity and economic factors.

However, the public sensed a decline in the quality of modern architecture in the 1960s, partly because of lack of meaning, sterility, ugliness, uniformity, and psychological impacts. Some architects answered through Post-Modern architecture to the business of architectural form that is more acceptable to the public on a visual level, even at the expense of depth. Robert Venturi argued that “the shack decorated / decorated shed” (an ordinary building interiors are functionally designed it while its exterior is decorated) is better than a “duck / duck” (the building in which both form and function into one). Venturi opinion is a basic approach to Post-Modern Architecture.

Some other architects (and also non-architect) responded by pointing out what they thought was the root of the problem. They felt that architecture is not a philosophical or aesthetic pursuit by an individual person, but the architecture must consider the needs of everyday people and using technology to achieve an environment that can be occupied. Design Methodology Movement involving people such as Chris Jones or Christopher Alexander started searching for a more inclusive process in the design, to get better results. Peneilitian depth in areas such as behavioral, environmental, and humanities conducted for the foundation design process.

Along with the increasing complexity of building, architecture becomes more multi-disciplinary than ever. Architecture today needs a professional set in the process. This is the architect of the current state of the profession. However, individual architects are still preferred and sought after in the design of the building meaningful cultural symbols. For example, a museum of fine art into the land of experimentation dekonstruktivis style today, but tomorrow maybe something else.

Successful zero energy building designers typically combine time tested passive solar, or natural conditioning, principles that work with the on site assets. Sunlight and solar heat, prevailing breezes, and the cool of the earth below a building, can provide daylighting and stable indoor temperatures with minimum mechanical means. ZEBs are normally optimized to use passive solar heat gain and shading, combined with thermal mass to stabilize diurnal temperature variations throughout the day, and in most climates are superinsulated. All the technologies needed to create zero energy buildings are available off-the-shelf today.

Sophisticated 3D computer simulation tools are available to model how a building will perform with a range of design variables such as building orientation (relative to the daily and seasonal position of the sun), window and door type and placement, overhang depth, insulation type and values of the building elements, air tightness (weatherization), the efficiency of heating, cooling, lighting and other equipment, as well as local climate. These simulations help the designers predict how the building will perform before it is built, and enable them to model the economic and financial implications on building cost benefit analysis, or even more appropriate – life cycle assessment.

Zero-energy buildings are built with significant energy-saving features. The heating and cooling loads are lowered by using high-efficiency equipment, added insulation, high-efficiency windows, natural ventilation, and other techniques. These features vary depending on climate zones in which the construction occurs. Water heating loads can be lowered by using water conservation fixtures, heat recovery units on waste water, and by using solar water heating, and high-efficiency water heating equipment. In addition, daylighting with skylites or solartubes can provide 100% of daytime illumination within the home. Nighttime illumination is typically done with fluorescent and LED lighting that use 1/3 or less power than incandescent lights, without adding unwanted heat. And miscellaneous electric loads can be lessened by choosing efficient appliances and minimizing phantom loads or standby power. Other techniques to reach net zero (dependent on climate) are Earth sheltered building principles, superinsulation walls using straw-bale construction, Vitruvianbuilt pre-fabricated building panels and roof elements plus exterior landscaping for seasonal shading.

Zero-energy buildings are often designed to make dual use of energy including white goods; for example, using refrigerator exhaust to heat domestic water, ventilation air and shower drain heat exchangers, office machines and computer servers, and body heat to heat the building. These buildings make use of heat energy that conventional buildings may exhaust outside. They may use heat recovery ventilation, hot water heat recycling, combined heat and power, and absorption chiller units.

Energy can be harvested on-site usually through a combination of energy producing technologies like Solar and Wind while reducing the overall use of energy with extremely efficient HVAC  and Lighting technologies. The zero-energy design principle is becoming more practical to adopt due to the increasing costs of traditional fossil fuels and their negative impact on the planet’s climate and ecological balance.

The zero net energy consumption principle is gaining considerable interest as renewable energy harvesting is a means to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional building consumes 40% of the total fossil energy in the US and European Union. In developing countries many people have to live in zero-energy buildings out of necessity. Many people live in huts, yurts, tents and caves exposed to temperature extremes and without access to electricity. These conditions and the limited size of living quarters would be considered uncomfortable in the developed countries.

To increase sustainability, various approaches to lower energy consumption are used in conjunction with natural building: sun-shading or other passive cooling techniques, passive solar heating, geo-exchange heating and cooling, “short-cycle” and “annualized” passive (and PV-assisted) solar space and water heating, hot water heat recycling, biologic air purification by indoor plants, passive or air-to-air/heat-recovery ventilation, solar or annualized cooling, insulated glazing and selective glazing films, night and cold-weather “movable” insulation, or on-site electric power generation by renewable energy in the form of photovoltaics (PV), wind generators, or micro-hydro (either with fully independent systems referred to as “off-grid” or with “grid-tied” systems feeding into the public electric network), low-voltage electric and avoidance of electro-magnetic and other possibly harmful forms of radiation.

Other green building strategies that improve conservation of resources include: rain-water catchment, storage, and purification; waste-water separation; biological waste-water purification and grey-water reuse; composting toilets, on-site snow/rain-water run-off management, bioswales, permeable paving, native or low-water-use (“xeriscape”) landscapes, and accommodation of alternative-fuelled/powered and human-powered vehicles.

A wide variety of reused or recycled  materials are common in natural building, including urbanite (salvaged chunks of used concrete), tires, tire bales, discarded bottles and other recycled glass. Several other materials are increasingly avoided by many practitioners of this building approach, due to their major negative environmental or health impacts.

These include unsustainably harvested wood, toxic wood-preservatives, portland cement-based mixes, paints and other coatings that off-gas volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and some plastics, particularly polyvinyl chloride (PVC or “vinyl”) and those containing harmful plasticizers or hormone-mimicking formulations.

Natural building tends to rely on human labor, more than technology. As Michael G. Smith observes, it depends on “local ecology, geology and climate; on the character of the particular building site, and on the needs and personalities of the builders and users”.

The basis of natural building is the need to lessen the environmental impact of buildings and other supporting systems, without sacrificing comfort, health or aesthetics. To be more sustainable, natural building uses primarily abundantly available, renewable, reused or recycled materials. The use of rapidly renewable materials is increasingly a focus. In addition to relying on natural building materials, the emphasis on the architectural design is heightened.

The orientation of a building, the utilization of local climate and site conditions, the emphasis on natural ventilation through design, fundamentally lessen operational costs and positively impact the environmental. Building compactly and minimizing the ecological footprint is common, as are on-site handling of energy acquisition, on-site water capture, alternate sewage treatment and water reuse.

Water
There are many methods of collecting and conserving water. Use reduction is cost-effective.

Greywater systems reuse drained wash water to flush toilets or to water lawns and gardens. Greywater systems can halve the water use of most residential buildings; however, they require the purchase of a sump, greywater pressurization pump and secondary plumbing. Some builders are installing waterless urinals and even composting toilets that completely eliminate water usage in sewage disposal.

The classic solution with minimal life-style changes is using a well. Once drilled, a well-foot requires substantial power. However, advanced well-foots can reduce power usage by twofold or more from older models. Well water can be contaminated in some areas. The sono arsenic filter eliminates unhealthy arsenic in well water.

However drilling a well is an uncertain activity, with aquifers depleted in some areas. It can also be expensive.

In regions with sufficient rainfall, it is often more economical to design a building to use rain, with supplementary water deliveries in a drought. Rain water makes excellent soft washwater, but needs antibacterial treatment. If used for drinking, mineral supplements or mineralization is necessary.

Most desert and temperate climates get at least 250 millimetres (9.8 in) of rain per year. This means that a typical one-story house with a greywater system can supply its year-round water needs from its roof alone. In the driest areas, it might require a cistern of 30 cubic metres (7,900 US gal). Many areas average 13 millimetres (0.51 in) of rain per week, and these can use a cistern as small as 10 cubic metres (2,600 US gal).

In many areas, it is difficult to keep a roof clean enough for drinking. To reduce dirt and bad tastes, systems use a metal collecting-roof and a “roof cleaner” tank that diverts the first 40 liters. Cistern water is usually chlorinated, though reverse osmosis systems provide even better quality drinking water.

Modern cisterns are usually large plastic tanks. Gravity tanks on short towers are reliable, so pump repairs are less urgent. The least expensive bulk cistern is a fenced pond or pool at ground level.

Reducing autonomy reduces the size and expense of cisterns. Many autonomous homes can reduce water use below 10 US gallons (38 L) per person per day, so that in a drought a month of water can be delivered inexpensively via truck. Self-delivery is often possible by installing fabric water tanks that fit the bed of a pick-up truck.

It can be convenient to use the cistern as a heat sink or trap for a heat pump or air conditioning system; however this can make cold drinking water warm, and in drier years may decrease the efficiency of the HVAC system.

Solar stills can efficiently produce drinking water from ditch water or cistern water, especially high-efficiency multiple effect humidification designs, which separate the evaporator(s) and condenser(s).

New technologies, like reverse osmosis can create unlimited amounts of pure water from polluted water, ocean water, and even from humid air. Water makers are available for yachts that convert seawater and electricity into potable water and brine. Atmospheric water generators extract moisture from dry desert air and filter it to pure water.

Sewage
Resource
The approaches above treat human excrement as a waste rather than a resource. Composting toilets use bacteria to decompose human feces  into useful, odourless, sanitary compost. The process is sanitary because soil bacteria eat the human pathogens as well as most of the mass of the waste. Nevertheless, most health authorities forbid direct use of “humanure” for growing food.  The risk is microbial and viral contamination. In a dry composting toilet, the waste is evaporated or digested to gas (mostly carbon dioxide) and vented, so a toilet produces only a few pounds of compost every six months. To control the odor, modern toilets use a small fan to keep the toilet under negative pressure, and exhaust the gasses to a vent pipe.

Some home sewage treatment systems use biological treatment, usually beds of plants and aquaria, that absorb nutrients and bacteria and convert greywater and sewage to clear water. This odor and color free reclaimed water can be used to flush toilets and water outside plants. When tested, it approaches standards for potable water. In climates that freeze, the plants and aquaria need to be kept in a small greenhouse space. Good systems need about as much care as a large aquarium.

Electric incinerating toilets turn excrement into a small amount of ash. They are cool to the touch, have no water and no pipes, and require an air vent in a wall. They are used in remote areas where use of septic tanks is limited, usually to reduce nutrient loads in lakes.

NASA’s bioreactor is an extremely advanced biological sewage system. It can turn sewage into air and water through microbial action. NASA plans to use it in the manned Mars mission.

A big disadvantage of complex biological sewage treatment systems is that if the house is empty, the sewage system biota may starve to death.

Another method is NASA’s urine to water distillation system.

Waste
Sewage handling is not attractive, but it is essential for public health. Many diseases are transmitted by poorly functioning sewage systems.

The standard system is a tiled leach field combined with a septic tank. The basic idea is to provide a small system with primary sewage treatment. Sludge settles to the bottom of the septic tank, is partially reduced by anaerobic digestion, and fluid is dispersed in the leach field. The leach field is usually under a yard growing grass. Septic tanks can operate entirely by gravity, and if well managed, are reasonably safe.

Septic tanks have to be pumped periodically by a honey wagon to eliminate non reducing solids. Failure to pump a septic tank can cause overflow that damages the leach field, and contaminates ground water. Septic tanks may also require some lifestyle changes, such as not using garbage disposals, minimizing fluids flushed into the tank, and minimizing nondigestible solids flushed into the tank. For example, septic safe toilet paper is recommended.

However, septic tanks remain popular because they permit standard plumbing fixtures, and require few or no lifestyle sacrifices.

Composting or packaging toilets make it economical and sanitary to throw away sewage as part of the normal garbage collection service. They also reduce water use by half, and eliminate the difficulty and expense of septic tanks. However, they require the local landfill to use sanitary practices.

Incinerator systems are quite practical. The ashes are biologically safe, and less than 1/10 the volume of the original waste, but like all incinerator waste, are usually classified as hazardous waste.

Some of the oldest pre-system sewage types are pit toilets, latrines, and outhouses. These are still used in many developing countries.

Storm drains
Drainage systems are a crucial compromise between human habitability and a secure, sustainable watershed. Paved areas and lawns or turf do not allow much precipitation to filter through the ground to recharge aquifers. They can cause flooding and damage in neighbourhoods, as the water flows over the surface towards a low point.

Typically, elaborate, capital-intensive storm sewer networks are engineered to deal with stormwater. In some cities, such as the Victorian era London sewers or much of the old City of Toronto, the storm water system is combined with the sanitary sewer system. In the event of heavy precipitation, the load on the sewage treatment plant at the end of the pipe becomes too great to handle and raw sewage is dumped into holding tanks, and sometimes into surface water.

Autonomous buildings can address precipitation in a number of ways:

If a water absorbing swale for each yard is combined with permeable concrete streets, storm drains can be omitted from the neighbourhood. This can save more than $800 per house (1970s) by eliminating storm drains. One way to use the savings is to purchase larger lots, which permits more amenities at the same cost. Permeable concrete is an established product in warm climates, and in development for freezing climates. In freezing climates, the elimination of storm drains can often still pay for enough land to construct swales (shallow water collecting ditches) or water impeding berms instead. This plan provides more land for homeowners and can offer more interesting topography for landscaping.

A green roof captures precipitation and uses the water to grow plants. It can be built into a new building or used to replace an existing roof.

Electricity
Since electricity is an expensive utility, the first step towards conservation is to design a house and lifestyle to reduce demand. Fluorescent lights, laptop computers and gas-powered refrigerators save electricity, although gas-powered refrigerators are not very efficient. There are also superefficient electric refrigerators, such as those produced by the Sun Frost company, some of which use only about half as much electricity as a mass-market energy star-rated refrigerator.

Using a solar roof, solar cells can provide electric power. Solar roofs have the potential to be more cost-effective than retrofitted solar power, because buildings need roofs anyway. Modern solar cells last about 40 years, which makes them a reasonable investment in some areas. Solar cells have only small life-style impacts: The cells must be cleaned a few times per year.

A number of areas that lack sun have wind. To generate power, the average autonomous house needs only one small wind generator, 5 metres or less in diameter. On a 30 metre high tower, this turbine can provide enough power to supplement solar power on cloudy days. Commercially available wind turbines use sealed, one-moving-part AC generators and passive, self-feathering blades for years of operation without service.

The largest advantage of wind power is that larger wind turbines have a lower per-watt cost than solar cells, provided there is wind. However, location is critical. Just as some locations lack sun for solar cells, some locations lack sufficient wind for an economical turbine installation. In the Great Plains of the United States a 10 metre turbine can supply enough energy to heat and cool a well-built all-electric house. Economic use in other areas requires research, and possibly a site-survey.

During times of low demand, excess power can be stored in batteries for future use. However, batteries need to be replaced every few years. In many areas, battery expenses can be eliminated by attaching the building to the electric power grid and operating the power system with net metering. Utility permission is required, but such cooperative generation is legally mandated in some areas (for example, California).

A grid-based building is less autonomous, but more economical and sustainable with fewer lifestyle sacrifices. In rural areas the grid’s cost and impacts can be reduced by using single wire earth return systems (for example, the MALT-system).

In areas that lack access to the grid, battery size can be reduced by including a generator to recharge the batteries during extended fogs or other low-power conditions. Auxiliary generators are usually run from propane, natural gas, or sometimes diesel. An hour of charging usually provides a day of operation. Modern residential chargers permit the user to set the charging times, so the generator is quiet at night. Some generators automatically test themselves once per week.

Recent advances in passively stable magnetic bearings may someday permit inexpensive storage of power in a flywheel in a vacuum. Well-funded groups like Canada’s Ballard Power Systems are also working to develop a “regenerative fuel cell”, a device that can generate hydrogen and oxygen when power is available, and combine these efficiently when power is needed.

Earth batteries tap electric currents in the earth called telluric current. They can be installed anywhere in the ground. They provide only low voltages and current. They were used to power telegraphs in the 19th century. As appliance efficiencies increase, they may become practical.

Microbial fuel cells finally allow the generation of electricity from biomass. Unlike direct incineration of biomass however, the method using a microbial fuel cell is completely emissionless. The plant can be chopped and converted as a whole, or it can be left alive so that waste saps from the plant can be converted by bacteria.