Building Tomorrow: Revolutionary Materials for Sustainable Construction

Dear Colleagues,

The construction sector significantly contributes to carbon emissions—from resource extraction to the manufacturing of materials and their transportation to construction sites. This sector is a major source of environmental pollution and consumes around 1 million tons of non-renewable raw materials daily. This reality has spurred the search for alternatives to conventional materials and innovations in material manufacturing and performance, aiming to reduce the environmental impact of both new and existing structures. In this context, enhancing our understanding of building performance and the behavior of construction materials and building components through the development of modelling tools and experimental characterization methods is critical. To mitigate environmental impacts and conserve precious resources, alternative materials, such as construction and demolition waste, municipal solid waste bottom ash, fly ash, biomass fly ash, glass waste, and dredging sediments, are being used as secondary raw materials. This initiative seeks to motivate scientists and researchers to share their experimental and theoretical insights, focusing on developing sustainable solutions for the construction industry. Our goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decrease reliance on non-renewable resources.

In this Special Issue, we are seeking papers on the performance of innovative building materials and related technologies. We invite original, high-quality articles that address all facets of sustainable and energy-efficient construction and research. This includes, but is not limited to, studies on the material properties of innovative and sustainable building materials, component designs, assemblies, connections, structural and environmental behaviors, and other pertinent topics. Dr. Roy, Dr. Ananthi, and Dr. Fang encourage authors to submit their manuscripts for potential inclusion in this Special Issue of Buildings, titled "Building Tomorrow: Revolutionary Materials for Sustainable Construction".

The key themes of this Special Issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Natural and sustainable building materials;
• Waste-incorporating building materials;
• Innovative, adaptive building skins;
• The hygrothermal and acoustic performance of innovative materials/systems;
• Sustainable materials for rehabilitation, retrofitting, and refurbishment;
• Bio and healthy building research;
• Energy use and climate;
• Sustainable urban development;
• The energy efficiency of hybrid cold-formed steel sections;
• Sustainability and the life-cycle assessment of buildings;
• The energy efficiency of houses made of steel; 
• Lightweight housing using steel and composite structures;
• Innovative construction systems using lightweight materials for sustainability;
• 3D printing and integrating 3D printing technology in construction;
• Concrete/steel as a recyclable material;
• Detailed requirements for alternative technology;
• Whole-of-life embodied carbon;
• Operational energy;
• Other topics related to the performance of innovative building materials, related technologies, and systems for a sustainable built environment.

Suitable paper types for this Special Issue include the following:

• Methodological papers;
• Conceptual papers;
• Case studies;
• Systematic literature reviews.

Dr. Krishanu Roy
Dr. G. Beulah Gnana Ananthi
Dr. Zhiyuan Arthur Fang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• carbon footprint
• energy consumption
• waste management
• sustainable materials
• green construction materials
• recycled materials
• eco-friendly building materials
• non-conventional building materials
• repair
• lean construction
• circular economy
• life-cycle assessment
• smart buildings