A pilot study of the color performance of recycling green building materials

The concept of green building integrates a variety of strategies during the design, construction and operation of building projects. The use of green building materials represents one very crucial strategy during the design and construction of a building. Recycling green building materials refer to those building materials reproduced from other materials, namely, reclaim the waste or discarded materials to produce the building materials. In Taiwan, gypsum boards are widely used in the building industry as facing materials for walls and ceilings due to their very good mechanical and thermal properties, as well as fire endurance. The goal of this study is to develop a new recycling green building material which could reuse the daily waste materials, color changeable and give inspiration to improve the characters of green building materials, In this study, six waste materials in our daily lives were mixed with the allochroic powder and gypsum powder to create thermochromic face bricks. The experiment modules were Groups A, B, C, and D, and mixed with allochroic powders of different specifications. The findings showed that Group C had the most significant RGB variation. In terms of the G value of Group C, the variations of the six materials were wood chips 81.9% >, newspaper 78% >, concrete 75.6% >, fallen leaves 66.6% >, iron powder 59.2% >, and silt 50.9%. In conclusion, allochroic faced bricks can be applied to both interior and exterior walls of different types of buildings in the future, thus, the buildings have different colors at different temperatures and times, cater to the changeful effects of future architectural appearances. Regarding the landscape, building and interior designers can construct artistic creations of shell collages. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.