Assessing environmental sustainability in architecture through embodied energy and ecological footprint analysis

Several product categories have tried to reinvent themselves molding by the concept of environmental sustainability. Recently the disciplines of Architecture and Building construction were influenced by such ideas and they both have welcomed the environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, it is helpful to proceed with caution in every phase of changing, to prevent that the situation becomes more problematic than the real problem. This is the reason why a lot of environmental sustainability indicators, able to monitor and to show the way to follow to go toward the process, were defined. In the framework of environmental sustainability assessment, Embodied Energy (EE) and Ecological Footprint (EF) have recently applied in Architecture. In this work we tried to explain the potential and the limit of their working method. The main objects are: a) to compare two different typologies of buildings to understand which are the differences in results; b) to show the advantages and disadvantages of using the two indicators, considering the best way to perform the assessment.