construction

Cutting Construction Carbon

- Adam Clare
the suburbs

Building buildings takes a lot of energy and once done the built structure continues to consume energy and have a carbon footprint. Many options exist to reduce the carbon impact of buildings from the point of construction all the way to deconstruction, but the industry still needs to adopt these measures. Things are getting better though as more people in the industry understand how to think about the carbon footprint of the construction industry.

Take Whole Life Carbon Perspective

By plotting the impact of a building over time, we observed the tensions between upfront impact strategies and long-term solutions. Our class first employed a “whole life carbon” approach to assess emissions associated with the construction and performance of a range of façade systems, discovering that the bulk of an enclosure system’s upfront emissions stem from window systems reliant on carbon-intensive framing materials, such as aluminum or polyvinyl chloride. Last fall, we scaled our investigations up to the whole building, finding that the actual operational data uniformly eclipsed modeled emissions, and that the balance between embodied and operational emissions varied significantly across the campus’s buildings.

Read more.

Architects Need to Build Their Knowledge to Build a Sustainable Future

- Adam Clare
construction

Current popular building practices lack a nuanced approach to sustainability due to years of it being culturally ok to put future generations into ecological debt. Thankfully, things are starting to change and architects want to build a sustainable future, and fast. Prior to mass industrialization buildings were constructed using locally sourced materials, making them more sustainable with a relatively small carbon footprint. As globalization increased the techniques of using local materials were forgotten and now architects are calling for everybody in their field to share best practices around locally sourced material and techniques.

Architects are at the forefront of our drive to lessen the impact humans have on the environment. While the agenda has stayed relatively constant since I was at school, the sustainability goalposts have moved – and narrowed. A building designed as zero-carbon just half a decade ago would now be considered ‘operationally’ zero-carbon at best, whereas ‘whole-life carbon’ calculations now consider the building’s demolition and waste disposal. Our thinking, designs and architectural goals must evolve, but things are evolving at such a speed; how on earth are architects to keep up?

‘Renewable and sustainable technologies change very quickly, as does our understanding of sustainable outcomes, so it is important to try to keep on top of it,’ says Tate Harmer partner Jerry Tate. ‘We need to communicate to each other in our industry, sharing best practice and our experiences to help get to the right answers.’

Read more.

To Build a Green Future We Need Green Buildings

- Adam Clare

the suburbs

Buildings suck up a lot of energy and thus are massive contributors to our collective carbon footprint. After they are built ongoing operational costs are incurred, and the costs are greater on buildings which are inefficiently deigned and built. This has led a team in the states to call for a new approach towards how construction functions in the nation. A green approach to build green is the dream.

Of course, the best thing we can do is work to reduce our demand on new buildings and re-purpose existing infrastructure to be more efficient.

With public demand growing for scalable climate solutions from all levels of government, policymakers can work together to transition the United States from a patchwork of requirements to a set of dynamic, performance-based policies that enable rapid decarbonization throughout a building’s lifecycle. Zero-carbon building codes for new construction address the emissions from buildings constructed each year, while emerging building performance standards and policies can address existing buildings.

Read more.

Bamboo is Super!

- Adam Clare

Bamboo grows quickly and so to is the market for bamboo. The plant can be used for many different things from building to bicycles, but what’s so great about it today is that more construction sites are aware of how great bamboo is. Bamboo can be used to build stand-alone structures or be used as scaffolding at a construction site – either way bamboo also acts as a carbon sink.

The fast growing rugged grass has “unrivaled capacity to capture carbon” the article claims.

The bamboo industry hails the crop’s other environmental benefits. Because it shoots up quickly – as much as a meter (over 3 feet) in a day – it is highly renewable.

According to the Bamboo Clothing website, it thrives without fertilizers or pesticides, requires little water, grows on slopes too inhospitable for other crops, and has a 10 times higher yield per acre than cotton. Want more? It does not uproot soil (harvesting involves cutting it as it’s a grass) and it’s 100 percent biodegradable, the website notes.

The World Bamboo Organization says today’s bamboo market is $10 billion and could double in five years. China produces about 80 percent of the world’s supply, but other nations are turning to it as a cash crop.

Read more here.

Negative Carbon Concrete

- Adam Clare

The most popular construction material on the planet is concrete and it turns out that the way we use it is not environmentally friendly. What if we changed that?

A company has created a great concrete variation that actually beneficial for the environment as it removes excess carbon!

While it functions much like commonly used Portland cement, boasting the same level of performance and the same average cost, Novacem’s concrete mixture uses magnesium silicate instead of calcium carbonates. The slinging of chemistry jargon might make this seem complicated, but the concept is simple: the creation of magnesium carbonates from magnesium silicates absorbs carbon dioxide. In other words, the production process is carbon negative. Furthermore, the production process of Novacem’s concrete is low-energy, allowing it to be sustained on biomass fuels.

Read more at Architizer.

Scroll To Top