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In the past few decades, world-wide interest in environmental preservation has involved researchers in a great challenge to find new approaches to manage the environmental impact of human activities. This challenge has been significantly highlighted in the construction sector. Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) has developed a variety of methodologies and tools to quantify and manage rates of consumption and emissions during the process of a building’s construction, service-life, and disposal. However, the building sector is not yet satisfied with the results of these methods and tools, due to the low level of sensitivity, lack of user-friendliness and precision. The principal goal of this research is to determine the level of confidence in prospective building lifecycle assessment (BLCA) methodologies and tools in the UK and their applicability to design and decision making. In addition, it investigates the differentiation of the results according to climatic and geographical variation. Therefore, it introduces a new prospective semi-quantitative framework to calculate some key factors such as total energy (including embodied energy and operational energy) during the building’s lifecycle, as well as the embodied carbon, and total environmental impact. The capability of this framework was tested through 132 modelling scenarios of a real case study (‘The Arts Tower’ of Sheffield, United Kingdom). In the study, a quantitative measurement approach was developed (an Excel-based spreadsheet) with a great flexibility in micro-detail modelling. This spreadsheet benefits from validated updatable databases and various-unlimited modelling programmes (such as Envest 2 and Ecotect 2011, in this research) to reach a more realistic decision in design. The results of this measurement approach were compared based on different modelling scenarios. The differences are based on the variety of building material scenarios through the case study building in Sheffield. The main outcome of this research is a framework of semi-quantitative prospective BLCA developed to achieve more precise results applicable to design and decision-making. The determination of the sensitivity and capability of this framework was conducted through both quantitative (132 modelling scenarios) and qualitative (surveys including questionnaires and interviews) approaches.

China's residential market has been booming since the time of the early twenty-first century, with an industrial structural transformation from quantitative to qualitative development. China's climate variability creates a unique relationship between occupancy and building environment, requiring thermal environmental comfort research and energy efficiency residential building context. The aim of this research is to improve low-energy apartment standards in China using multidisciplinary interactive research directly focused on actual occupants' thermal comfort under the regional climatic conditions and applying adaptive thermal comfort theory. This PhD research is based on field study of a questionnaire survey and on-site measurement. The actual building environment assessment presents the research gap of adaptive coefficient between rational thermal approach and adaptive thermal approach. The heat-balance approach of Fanger's 'Predicted Mean Vote' (PMV) comfort model is usually incorporated into the 'Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied' (PPD) model. The adaptive approach of 'adaptive Predicted Mean Vote' (aPMV) model is based on Yao's research, taking into account factors such as psychological and behavioral adaptations. There are three main conclusion sections in this thesis, including regional adaptive thermal comfort research, occupants' subjective adaptive preference and parametric study of building design in the 'Hot Summer and Cold Winter' (HSCW) zone. Six conclusion points are extended: (1) According to the questionnaire-based survey, overcooling causes serious concern for thermal comfort in cold winters in the HSCW zone, which is similar to the overheating potential of the worst energy consumption impact during hot summers in residential buildings. (2) The specific adaptive coefficient is necessary for obtaining regional adaptive thermal comfort temperature ranges with neutral indoor air temperatures assessment. (3) The occupants' personal characteristics and social backgrounds; the statistical analysis suggested that a person's age, gender, education level and building layout environment strongly relate to the control of indoor acceptable air temperature, and the margin limit of thermal comfort also has a strong relationship with the weather data of monthly outdoor air temperatures. (4) Adaptive thermal environment control have increased energy usage compared to energy efficiency control, but is lower than current healthy housing standards of energy consumption. (5) The question of decreasing the building shape coefficient does not has a decisive effect for energy conservation, and the building performance of energy consumption per unit indoor floor area has a significant impact on energy savings. (6) The parametric analyses also suggested that the subjective nature of people participating has a great influence on the relationship between objective building design and building performance results.

The main goal of this research is to develop a "Sustainability Rating System" that specialised for tall-building projects. The System can be used as a managing tool to compare and improve the sustainability features of tall-building design schemes; or can be used to evaluate the sustainability of existing tall-building projects. The name of the System is: TPSI - Tall-building Projects Sustainability Indicator. The TPSI Rating System comprises of two components: the "Technical Manual" (in form of a booklet) and the "Calculator" (in form of an Excel tool). The users will claim "credits" for their tall-building project by demonstrating compliance with the assessment criteria that are detailed in the "Technical Manual". The achieved credits will be inputted into the "Calculator" accordingly. The "Calculator" will then produce assessment results in form of ratings (percentage), charts, graphs, and issues checklist. The market place of the design and construction of high performance buildings is dynamic and evolving. Professionals throughout the building industry use assessment/rating systems to evaluate and differentiate their products or designs. After more than 20 years of development, sustainability rating systems have become inevitable, as sustainable development is now the global trend. Among the extensive development of hundreds of rating tools, tall-buildings' sustainability evaluation is a neglected area. As there is no specialised rating system for tall-buildings so far, most of the existing systems are used for all type of projects, which causes major inappropriateness and inaccuracy. This research aims to improve the quality of tall-buildings' sustainability assessment activities by filling these gaps in the new developed system. It is expected to be an original and practical contribution to the development of sustainable architecture in general and tall-building sustainable design in particular; as well as other academic, social and commercial benefits.