The emerging countries’ society has demanded an increase on investments for affordable housing to long forgotten communities with low income – along, customarily, with the mind-set of sustainable development. In the past years, Brazil, for instance, has had an expansion on government programs that subsidize low-cost housing and, thus, studies on this area become more needed. In this paper, the sustainable aspects of two construction methods (Light Steel Framing and Structural Concrete Walls) are reviewed. The theories involving both methods and their practical approach are compared to their economical, ecological and social standards aiming to identify the more sustainable one. Local aspects such as the supplying of materials, the workforce expertise and the possible social obsolesce projections are fairly granted for both techniques. Hence, it was possible to track one construction site of the extension of approximately 1600 houses on Structure Concrete Walls and another one of a single house on Light Steel Frame, which is then extrapolated to an extent of several houses for comparison. Furthermore, based on the sustainable standards (economical, ecological, and social), the Light Steel Frame mechanism has been demonstrated to be superior in all standards when applied to geographic conditions.

The civil construction business acts directly on the environment, changing and shaping the interactions of those who live in it. The construction takes part on consuming 4 to 7 tons of material for each world’s habitant annually (Agopyan et al., 2008). Therefore, building interferes directly with the natural resources and the community’s lives – ergo, sustainable manners must take hand in the conception of projects and community interference. Locally, Brazil has a deficit in affordable housing and for that reason; the government is encouraging contractors to invest in parks of affordable housing for low-income families. With that said, big horizontal sites are growing vastly in Brazil and it is ideal and necessary to conduct this growth by applying sustainable manners. Having in mind this growing scenario, two construction practices were counterweighted, not only by their productivity and by profits but also by their sustainable practices and outcomes: Light Steel Framing and Structural Concrete Walls construction’s methods were evaluated by their influence on ecological effect, economically viability and social impact practices in an affordable housing context.