Refurbishment and adaptive reuse have been at the forefront of architectural discourse in recent years. This demonstrates that the profession is becoming increasingly aware of its impact on the environment and the opportunities presented by reusing what has already been built. Architecture 2030 has recently launched CARE, or Carbon Avoided Retrofit Estimator, a new digital tool that enables designers, owners, and communities to quantify the carbon benefits of adaptive reuse. By entering a streamlined set of project information, such as energy targets and potential building interventions, users can quickly estimate both operational carbon emissions generated by the use of the building and embodied carbon emissions, which are tied to the building materials employed.
Renovations are generally considered the more sustainable choice because of their lower upfront carbon footprint compared to new buildings. This is because renovations reuse the most carbon-intensive parts of the building, the foundation, structure, and envelope. Despite this intuitive conclusion, quantifiable data and information is difficult to be acquired. The CARE tool addresses this gap, offering a comparison between the carbon footprint of reused existing buildings versus new construction.
The digital tool takes into consideration a series of variables such as the interventions required, for example, to increase density or accommodate new uses, the climate zone, grid intensity, and the condition of the existing building. The outputs are visualized as total embodied and operational carbon over a specified time frame as well as cumulative emissions over time. Three scenarios are explored: the existing building, the renovated building, and the new construction. The results can be easily compared to help the decision-making process and determine the lowest-total carbon approach and the time frame in which that occurs.
CARE can also be used by policymakers, developers, heritage building officers, or educators interested in the pre-design assessment of the total emissions impact of an architectural project. The app is available for free on the official CARE website. The early assessment tool was developed by design experts Larry Strain of Siegel and Strain Architects, Erin McDade of Architecture 2030, and Lori Ferriss of Goody Clancy.
The CARE tool allows us to demonstrate—in minutes—the benefits of renovations, not just to the human experience of the buildings, but to their environmental footprint. This is a great addition to the tools architects need to make the case for the rapid transformation of our existing building stock. - Z Smith, Principal and Director of Sustainability and Building Performance at Eskew+Dumez+Ripple
EHDD has also launched EPIC, or Early-Phase Integrated Carbon assessment, a free web-based tool that aims to help designers identify the most impactful measures that can be taken early in the design process to reduce carbon emissions from construction projects. Another recently launched digital tool helps users understand how space is distributed and restricted across the neighborhoods of New York City by assessing key factors such as pollution, traffic fatalities, accessibility, or air quality in the city. ArchDaily also has the chance to sit down with Jakob Strømann-Andersen, Partner and Director of Henning Larsen’s Innovation and Sustainability Department to talk about digital tools and their incorporation in the design process.
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Circular Economy. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.
