Comparison of sustainable building rating systems in life cycle of a building

Rapidly growing production, evolving technology, population growth and consumption-oriented lifestyles with the industrial revolution have caused problems such as global warming, climate change, environmental pollution and rapid decline of natural resources all over the world, which seriously affect our future. The construction industry is also responsible for all this damage to the environment. In order to minimize the damage done to the environment, it is necessary for people to become conscious and start to adopt the concept of sustainability and to apply the requirements of this concept. The stereotyped concepts such as green building, sustainability and ecological architecture have become increasingly fashionable and marketing tools. Green building rating systems are guidelines and incentives to put sustainability measures into practice. However, these rating systems have some practical problems. For this reason, in the thesis study, it is observed and compared how sustainability criterias of systems are handled by examining green building rating systems in the structure of life cycle. Within the scope of the thesis study; summary of literature, purpose of thesis and hypothesis has been informed. In the second chapter; sustainability in architecture has been evaluated through the concepts of 'Green Building', 'Ecological Design' and 'Green Washing'. After a general description of these concepts, life cycle design in sustainable building design process, integrated design process and sustainability criterias have been examined in detail in this section. Within the scope of the thesis, the role of digital technologies in the sustainable building design process has also been examined. In the third chapter of the thesis; six methods of green building rating systems widely used in the world have been researched in order to determine the sustainability criterias and to implement them correctly. These systems were selected as the most emphasized BREEAM, LEED, DGNB, CASBEE, SBTool and Green Star in the literature. Sustainability criterias, building categories and grades of certifications are compared. Later, the use of these systems in Turkey and CEDBIK-Residential Certification for residential buildings in Turkey has been examined. At the end of the chapter; the use of systems over sample projects has been investigated. In the fourth chapter; evaluations and recommendations based on the data for Turkey has been presented. With in the light of information of examined systems, the sustainability criterias for Turkey in the building life cycle has been presented. In the conclusion section of the thesis; green building rating system implemented in Turkey and criticism and suggestions about green building sector has tried to be reflected. All studies in this thesis were evaluated and results were obtained.