The New Carbon Architecture

Soak up carbon into beautiful, healthy buildings that heal the climate "Green buildings" that slash energy use and carbon emissions are all the rage, but they aren't enough. The hidden culprit is embodied carbon — the carbon emitted when materials are mined, manufactured, and transported — comprising some 10% of global emissions. With the built environment doubling by 2030, buildings are a carbon juggernaut threatening to overwhelm the climate. It doesn't have to be this way. Like never before in history, buildings can become part of the climate solution. With biomimicry and innovation, we can pull huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it up as walls, roofs, foundations, and insulation. We can literally make buildings out of the sky with a massive positive impact. The New Carbon Architecture is a paradigm-shifting tour of the innovations in architecture and construction that are making this happen. Office towers built from advanced wood products; affordable, low-carbon concrete alternatives; plastic cleaned from the oceans and turned into building blocks. We can even grow insulation from mycelium. A tour de force by the leaders in the field, The New Carbon Architecture will fire the imagination of architects, engineers, builders, policy makers, and everyone else captivated by the possibility of architecture to heal the climate and produce safer, healthier, and more beautiful buildings.

Updated throughout, and adds a chapter on building simulations Presents strategies for new construction and also offers those that can be implemented for existing buildings to improve their energy performance and reduce emissions Explains the origins of CO2 emissions associated with the operation and fabrication of buildings: supplying water, disposing of waste from the building, etc. Covers air-flow analysis and radiation impact surveys, solar heating options, daylighting and window options Examines a building's siting/location within a community, local/regional planning issues, and transportation considerations

“Net Zero” has been an effective rallying cry for the green building movement, signaling a goal of having every building generate at least as much energy as it uses. Enormous strides have been made in improving the performance of every type of new building, and even more importantly, renovating the vast and energy-inefficient collection of existing buildings in every country. If we can get every building to net-zero energy use in the next few decades, it will be a huge success, but it will not be enough. In Build Beyond Zero, carbon pioneers Bruce King and Chris Magwood re-envision buildings as one of our most practical and affordable climate solutions instead of leading drivers of climate change. They provide a snapshot of a beginning and map towards a carbon-smart built environment that acts as a CO2 filter. Professional engineers, designers, and developers are invited to imagine the very real potential for our built environment to be a site of net carbon storage, a massive drawdown pool that could help to heal our climate. The authors, with the help of other industry experts, show the importance of examining what components of an efficient building (from windows to solar photovoltaics) are made with, and how the supply chains deliver all those products and materials to a jobsite. Build Beyond Zero looks at the good and the bad of how we track carbon (Life Cycle Assessment), then takes a deep dive into materials (with a focus on steel and concrete) and biological architecture, and wraps up with education, policy and governance, circular economy, and where we go in the next three decades. In Build Beyond Zero, King and Magwood show how buildings are culprits but stand poised to act as climate healers. They offer an exciting vision of climate-friendly architecture, along with practical advice for professionals working to address the carbon footprint of our built environment.

Providing a complete and in-depth overview of the available knowledge in the area of low energy and low carbon architecture. The scope of this edited book includes several important topics ranging from chapters giving a broad view of the progressing models in ecologically responsible environments to other chapters focussing on recent advances in de

Want to keep up with emerging design thinking and issues worldwide? Design Studio is a new thematic series that distils the most topical work and ideas from schools and practices globally. The first volume launches with a statement: Everything Needs to Change. Exploring architecture and the climate emergency, editors Sofie Pelsmakers (author of Environmental Design Sourcebook) and Nick Newman (climate activist and Director at Studio Bark), are channelling the message of Greta Thunberg to inspire, enthuse and inform the next generation of architects. Featuring articles, building profiles and case studies from a range of leading voices, it explores solutions to climatic, environmental and social challenges. It urges readers to radically rethink what it means to be an architect in an era of climate crisis, and what the role of the architect is or can be. Discover how using local materials, working with nature, radical design processes, transformative learning and activism can help us find hope in the burning world. Together, we can force change for a more sustainable and equitable tomorrow. This first volume is produced in four unique fluorescent colours – green, red, yellow and purple – to be your own poster for change.

"Until now, most environmental discourse in architecture has focused on carbon as a by-product of building and construction," writes guest editor Elisa Iturbe in Log 47, "making it seem that at the ecological brink, architecture's most pressing concern is energy efficiency." "Overcoming Carbon Form," Log's 200-page thematic Fall issue, reconceives architecture's role in climate change, away from sustainability and solutionism and toward architecture's formal complicity and potential agency in addressing the climate crisis. As Iturbe writes, "Decarbonization is not solely a question of technology and buildings systems but also a theoretical question for architecture and the city, one that questions carbon modernity as an obsolete cultural and material foundation for architecture." To that end, the 24 authors - architects, artists, sociologists, historians, novelists, and policy makers - approach architecture's role in the climate crisis in widely varied ways. From Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria Shéhérazade Giudici on rethinking private property to Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong on the house as power plant; from Holly Jean Buck on carbon sequestration infrastructure to Mimi Sheller on the military-infrastructural complex; from Skender Luarasi on anticipation to Albert Pope on urban obsolescence; from Lizzie Yarina on neoliberal resilience schemes and Gökçe Günel on a status quo utopia to Tahl Kaminer on the impossibility of autarky and Douglas Spencer on the fantasy of island life. Also in this issue, Kiel Moe on new perspectives, Rania Ghosn on geographic externalities, Laurence Lumley on asphalt, Ingrid Halland on plastic, Greg Lindquist on rolling coal, and Daniel A. Barber on air-conditioning. Plus an excerpt from Amitav Ghosh's book The Great Derangement and a conversation with Rhiana Gunn-Wright on the Green New Deal.

Housing is a major contributor to CO2 emissions in Europe and America today and the construction of new homes offers an opportunity to address this issue. Providing homes that achieve "zero carbon", "carbon neutral", "zero-net energy" or "energy-plus" standard is becoming the goal of more innovative house-builders globally, whilst energy providers seek to decarbonise the energy supply to new and existing development. Various new technical systems for achieving these goals are beginning to emerge. For example the passive house whose energy requirement for space heating and cooling is almost zero; the smart grid that has revolutionized the management of energy, whilst enabling the connection of small-scale, renewable energy producers and electric vehicles to the grid; or the European super-grid which will enable zero carbon energy to be generated in the Sahara desert and stored in Norway. This book explores the diverse approaches that are being adopted around the world to deliver zero carbon homes and the different societal systems and geographic circumstances in which they have developed. It postulates a roadmap for delivering zero carbon homes, together with a toolbox approach for policy and practice to suit particular national and local circumstances. A series of case studies are presented that offer lessons for delivering zero carbon homes. These examples are also used to demonstrate how prototype systems can move into the mainstream. The book highlights some of the instruments and mechanisms that could be used to support this transformation and addresses the wider implications of introducing these innovative systems in terms of industry, lifestyle and urban form.

How climate influenced the design strategies of modernist architects Modern Architecture and Climate explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs, and shows how regional approaches to climate adaptability were essential to the development of modern architecture. Focusing on the period surrounding World War II—before fossil-fuel powered air-conditioning became widely available—Daniel Barber brings to light a vibrant and dynamic architectural discussion involving design, materials, and shading systems as means of interior climate control. He looks at projects by well-known architects such as Richard Neutra, Le Corbusier, Lúcio Costa, Mies van der Rohe, and Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and the work of climate-focused architects such as MMM Roberto, Olgyay and Olgyay, and Cliff May. Drawing on the editorial projects of James Marston Fitch, Elizabeth Gordon, and others, he demonstrates how images and diagrams produced by architects helped conceptualize climate knowledge, alongside the work of meteorologists, physicists, engineers, and social scientists. Barber describes how this novel type of environmental media catalyzed new ways of thinking about climate and architectural design. Extensively illustrated with archival material, Modern Architecture and Climate provides global perspectives on modern architecture and its evolving relationship with a changing climate, showcasing designs from Latin America, Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Africa. This timely and important book reconciles the cultural dynamism of architecture with the material realities of ever-increasing carbon emissions from the mechanical cooling systems of buildings, and offers a historical foundation for today’s zero-carbon design.