E. K Al-Geelawe - Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad, Iraq
A. H. Mohsin - Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Al-Mustansirya, Iraq.

The main object of this paper is to highlight sustainable building strategies and reality of implementing those strategies in the design of buildings in Iraq. That object was achieved through two stages, at the first stage a theoretical study was conducted to identify sustainability principles in buildings, at the second stage a practical study was conducted throughpersonal interviews and open questionnaire, then a closed questionnaire was conducted to determine the reality of applying sustainability principles in buildings design .results of the practical study showed that there was a clearweakness in implementing sustainable building principles specially in the field of building materials which can be attributed to some reasons which were divided into administrative and technical reasons .a number of recommendations were proposed according to the research results in order to improve buildings design towards sustainable building in the future

Sustainable building, Building designs, Resource conservation, Sustainable materials