Analysis of Cultural Impact Categories and Subcategories for Cultural Life Cycle Assessment of Traditional Houses in India

Abstract

Culture has significantly influenced the architecture of the traditional houses in different parts of the world. However, it remains unaddressed in the sustainability assessment techniques of such houses. ‘Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)’ is one such assessment technique that assesses mainly the quantitative aspects associated with them. Previous LCA studies in the context of traditional houses or cultural heritage have mainly focused on the assessment of environmental impacts of restoration or renovation of heritage houses or optimizing their environmental performances. Also, LCA standards exist only for ‘Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (E – LCA)’ and ‘Social Life Cycle Assessment (S – LCA)’ which are the ‘ISO 14040’ and ‘Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products’ by UNEP / SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (2009) respectively. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the various tangible cultural impact categories and subcategories for developing a framework for ‘Cultural Life Cycle Assessment (C – LCA)’ of traditional houses, which has been unaddressed in the building LCA studies or LCA standards before. Data has been collected through a questionnaire survey and purposive sampling method has been used to select the sample for the study. A total of 207 respondents, comprising of professionals in the related fields, and common people of age 18 years and above residing in different parts of India took part in the survey. The questionnaire comprises of the basic details of the respondents, followed by questions which are measured on a 5 – point Likert scale, and some open – ended questions as well.  The collected data has been analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics software by using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method. Results show that 10 out of the 11 cultural subcategories have an influence on the ‘spatial organization of the house.’ Whereas ‘conformity to local climate, geology and geography’ mainly influences the impact subcategories such as pattern, type, size and shape of the house under the impact category ‘form of the house,’ with factor loadings of 0.830, 0.830, 0.769 and 0.742 respectively. The eigenvalue and total variance explained by the component consisting of these four impact subcategories are 2.521 and 63.024% respectively, with a Cronbach’s Alpha (reliability) value of 0.804. Since, previous studies have mainly focused on the assessment of quantitative aspects like environmental impacts of traditional houses, and standards exist only for E – LCA and S – LCA, the novelty of this study lies in the fact that it will help in assessing the cultural impacts associated with the transformations in traditional houses during their lifespan as well. The findings of this study will not only help in preserving the housing heritage, but will also help in the incorporation of culture, which is the fourth pillar of sustainability, in the LCA process along with other three pillars of sustainability.