The Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design (g-seed) for Multi-family Housing Rating System in Korea: a Review of Evaluating Practices and Suggestions for Improvement

Sustainability is an important objective for architecture as buildings contribute significantly to the quality of the environment. For this reason, various building environmental assessment systems have been developed and applied around the world since 1990. There is currently little research investigating newly developed systems unlike many previous studies on LEED, BREEAM, etc. To fill this gap, the present study focuses on the G-SEED system in Korea by comparing and contrasting its environmental categories and evaluation criteria with those of other major building environmental assessment systems. We introduce and examine the G-SEED system by addressing the Korean context and local needs to understand the forces between globalization and localization. Methods include a dense review of government documents and reports and interviews with practitioners. The results demonstrate that while the Korean rating system shares many similarities with other systems due to the influence of these predecessors on its development, the G-SEED has customized its practices to meet various local needs by developing unique evaluation criteria such as noise and safety.