Beta Paramita, Usep Surahman, Samad Sepasgozar
Modular or prefab houses in Indonesia are often considered temporary housing due to their use lightweight and non-rigid materials. The Indonesian National Standard (SNI) No. 235/KEP/BSN/7/2020 regulates design loads for buildings, including residential houses, but excludes lightweight structures. This presents challenges in securing financing, particularly for government construction service projects. Nevertheless, lightweight structure offers the benefit of rapid assembly, leading to a decrease in construction expenses. The structure additionally offers the advantage of being attachable to various materials for wall cladding, including bricks, sandwich panels, precast concrete, and metal panels. This paper highlights the design of a lightweight steel-frame micro house covered by metal panels for roofing and cladding, and examines its material inventory, embodied energy, and CO2 emissions. The analysis employed Input–Output (I–O) methods, linking material quantities with sectoral energy intensities from national input–output tables. Two experimental houses were constructed in Padalarang, West Bandung Regency, West Java-Indonesia with total areas areas of 22 m2(T22) and 25 m2(T25) and projected lifespans of 50 years. Material composition was obtained from design records, showing cement as the most used material: 3331.9 kg for T25 and 3312 kg for T22. Reinforcing bars (rebar) averaged 1540.1 kg, followed by steel IWF 745.8 kg, metal panel 136 m2, clay brick 84 units, iron elbow 77.8 kg, aluminium 29.5 m. Over their lifespan, the T22 and T25 houses recorded embodied CO₂ emissions of 58.0 and 53.5 kg CO₂-eq/m², equating to 1276 kg and 1338 kg CO₂-eq per unit. In contrast, a typical 36 m² brick-concrete house emits about 285 kg CO₂-eq/m², exceeding 10,000 kg CO₂-eq per house. Thus, lightweight steel-frame houses may reduce embodied emissions by 80–85 % compared to conventional construction. These findings underscore the urgency of updating SNI to include lightweight structures and highlight their potential in advancing affordable, sustainable housing in Indonesia. However, this study needs more investigation if buildings also have low operational energy or not without decreasing their thermal comfort of their occupants. © 2025 Institution of Structural Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
Center of Excellence for Low Carbon Building Material and Energy, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia; Magister Architecture, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia; School of Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sidney, Australia
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