| Summary: | Nowadays there is a main concern that should always be present in our minds; it is important to integrate and reconcile the economic, social and environmental aspects within a holistic and balanced sustainable development framework.Therefore, the construction sector has been facing a profound change in the materials used, new processes and approaches. According to this new aim, a new concept of structures had been born; the Affordable Houses.A concept is more often seen as an abstract idea of something, being it materialization always faced as a challenge. Therefore the challenge of this thesis is to create a system that could be able to erect, literally, a structure and, simultaneously, create conditions for the construction of a building, through the appliance of the concept of Modular Houses and Top Down Construction.For the implementation of these new concepts two case studies were created for the construction of a student residential building in Coimbra and Luleå. These case studies are integrated in different environments and socio-economic conditions, which will allow the assessment of this study to a more global application.This study was developed within the scope of a partnership between the University of Coimbra and Luleå University of Technology and was supervised by Professor Luís Simões da Silva and Professor Milan Veljkovic. Validerat; 20121031 (ysko)
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