Designed by Atkins, a new zero-carbon secondary school in West Sussex has received planning permission from the West Sussex County Council. The school will be created at Homes England’s new Brookleigh development near Burgess Hill and will offer educational facilities to 900 local children. The building is designed to generate its own renewable energy on-site, eliminating the need for any fossil fuels. It also aims to achieve Passivhaus certification, the highest standard od energy efficiency a building can reach.
Climate change has been one of the most pressing topics of this year, and for a good reason. Its effects are visible not only in natural habitats but also in urban environments. The construction industry has an important role to play in this dynamic. Throughout the year, events such as COP27 emphasized the importance of striving to achieve net carbon zero and the challenges faced by developing countries affected by increasingly devastating natural disasters. Possible directions for development include actions at varying stages and scales, from optimizing green spaces for urban heat control to employing local and innovative building materials to minimize the carbon footprint or passing laws that help create more sustainable urban and natural environments.
This article represents a roundup of articles published on ArchDaily during the course of 2022 with themes related to climate change and architecture’s potential to make a difference. It breaks down the topic into four main questions: What Are Cities Doing to Mitigate Urban Heat? How to Tackle Rising Sea Levels? What Was COP27 and Why Does It Matter? Can Building Materials Play a Role in Achieving These Goals? The last section presents an overview of new legislation approved during 2022 as a way of understanding how state and local governments are imposing this need for change.
The Athens International Airport was decommissioned in 2001, leading to two decades of work for the local government to establish funding and a governance mechanism to transform the 600 acres of unused space into Europe's largest coastal park. The site has a layered history, from prehistoric settlements to the construction of the airport in the 20th century and the site being used for as an Olympic venue in 2004. Architecture office Sasaki is leading the design to transform the site again and create the Ellinikon Metropolitan Park, a restorative landscape and climate-positive design that will serve as a park, playground, and cultural center for the city of Athens. Developers are planning to break ground early next year.
Foster + Partners has revealed the design for a new mixed-use development in the northern end of the central London high street. The building is located on Queensway, opposite the Whitley, the famous department store, which is also being transformed by Foster + Partners as part of a larger redevelopment scheme. Named The William, after William Whiteley, the eponymous founder of the famous Whiteleys, the project includes six floors of office space, shops, and 32 new homes, 11 of which will be affordable.
Mycelium-Grown Bio-Bricks / Evocative Design & The Living. Image Courtesy of The Living
The building industry is one of the biggest generators of carbon emissions, with some estimates suggesting that 38% percent of all CO2 emissions are linked to this field. As a response to the current crisis, architects, designers, and researchers are taking measures to reduce their carbon footprint during and after construction. Many initiatives and research teams are looking at building materials to find low-carbon solutions and reduce the impact of building materials during production.
One of the most prominent fields of research is concerned with biofacture, the type of process that involves using biological organisms to manufacture materials. By understanding the abilities of organisms such as algae of fungi, alternatives to widely used materials can become carbon neutral or even carbon negative. Other initiatives are researching novel ways to use untapped, yet readily available resources such as desert sand, soil, or waste from demolitions.
Material researchers and Ph.D. students at Imperial College London, Sam Draper and Barney Shanks have won the 2022 OBEL AWARD for Seratech, a solution for carbon-neutral concrete. With a special focus this year on “embodied emissions”, the OBEL AWARD jury selected scientists to obtain the architecture award to “encourage innovative cross-disciplinary solutions to the challenges of climate change”.
Kuwait is planning a 1,600-hectare development that will provide residential units, jobs, and amenities for 100,000 residents. Developed by URB, the ambitious project aims to promote a sustainable lifestyle with high standards of living, yet a low impact on the environment. The masterplan for the smart city is designed to optimize density and amenities distribution to create a walkable city, while also optimizing the green space ratio. This will help mitigate the effects of rising temperatures and the urban heat island effect. The green transportation systems and dedicated cycling tracks will make this a car-free city, apart from a ring road that allows for limited vehicular access. The city also promotes a circular economy that aims to provide food and energy security for the residents.
EHDD has recently launched the Early-Phase Integrated Carbon (EPIC) Assessment tool, a free new web-based application developed to designers set goals and strategies to reduce carbon emissions from building and construction projects. The tool aims to fill a gap in the life-cycle assessment process and allow designers to identify the most impactful measures early in the project process. At the same time, other resources like Tally and EC3 are seen as crucial later in the design.
The Zero Carbon policy is intended to create a kind of ecological balance to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions. Several studies report that the construction sector is one of the main responsible for the unbalance in which we find ourselves today, after all, it consumes natural resources on a gigantic scale and still builds buildings that do not collaborate with the maintenance of the environment. Therefore, searching for paths towards a carbon neutral architecture has become fundamental and one of them is learning from past masters, such as the Brazilian architect João Filgueiras Lima, known as Lelé.
The climate crisis has reshaped contemporary architecture. Sustainability has become a central guiding force in design, and in turn, architects are rethinking how to build today. For CO Adaptive Architecture, addressing the climate crisis begins with a process oriented practice. Together, Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston have created a firm that embodies how a values-based approach can tackle the most pressing issues of our time. The result is elegant and impactful architecture brought to life with poise and finesse.
A carbon neutral building is achieved when the amount of CO2 emissions is balanced by climate-positive initiatives so that the net carbon footprint over time is zero. Considering their unmatched ability to absorb CO2, planting trees is often viewed as the best carbon offsetting solution. But as cities become denser and the amount of available horizontal space for green areas drastically reduces, architects have been forced to explore other approaches. Therefore, to address these climatic challenges and connect people to nature, exterior green walls have become a rising trend in increasingly vertical cities. Even if there is research to claim that these can positively impact the environment, many question if they can actually contribute to a carbon neutral architecture. Although the answer may be quite complex, there seems to be a consensus: green walls can be effective, but only through good design.
It is crucial to consider the future environmental impact of everything we create. Climate change remains high on the global agenda, and every industry must take part in the goal of reaching Net Zero. One of the more challenging industries concerns construction, which plays a vital role in the process of decarbonization and is constantly encountered with challenges to become greener. Therefore, it demands innovative techniques and development of data to find new and sustainable processes. One solution is to introduce and design both cleaner and more efficient materials. Bricks are a good example, as they can be used in building constructions to ensure a circular process and minimize carbon emissions, being an extremely durable material that can be produced with more sustainable techniques.
Arup reveals the competition-winning design for a 230m tall net-zero commercial tower in Hong Kong that embodies the city's aspirations to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Taikoo Green Ribbon blends technology and nature to create an urban ecosystem sustaining a new generation of workplaces. Featuring a façade of curved PVs, hanging gardens, algae walls and various renewable energy sources, the project is a high-performance building slated to achieve carbon neutrality in less than a decade after construction.
On a recent day in Santa Monica, California, visitors sat in the shaded courtyard outside City Hall East waiting for appointments. One of them ate a slice of the orange she’d picked from the tree above her and contemplated the paintings, photographs, and assemblages on the other side of the glass. The exhibit, Lives that Bind, featured local artists’ expressions of erasure and underrepresentation in Santa Monica’s past. It’s part of an effort by the city government to use the new soon-to-be certified Living Building (designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners) as a catalyst for building a community that is environmentally, socially, and economically self-sustaining.
Heatherwick Studio has been selected to design an office building in Madrid for the Spanish department store chain El Corte Ingles. The studio's first project to be built in Spain, Castellana 69 embodies a comprehensive sustainability strategy while also promoting a new vision of the office space. Developed together with local practices CLK architects and BAC Engineering Consultancy Group, Castellana 69 features a green inner courtyard, taking advantage of a strong connection between indoor and outdoor spaces.
Martin C. Pedersen talks with Ron Rochon, managing partner at Miller Hull, about Carbon and the role of architectural firms in eliminating emissions. Discussing the EMissions Zero initiative, the current shortcomings of carbon offsets, and the way forward, the piece also questions the possibility of setting goals with the absence of an internationally, agreed-upon carbon cap.
Sustainable design in the United States is for many a sort of Rorschach test. The construction industry is either making steady progress toward the ultimate goal of a carbon-free building sector, or it’s moving entirely too slowly, missing key targets as the ecological clock keeps ticking. The perplexing truth to all of this is: both are ostensibly true. In recent decades the industry has become significantly more energy efficient. We’ve added building stock but flattened the energy curve. The cost of renewables continues to drop. But way more is required, much more quickly. At the same time, huge hurdles remain. Without a renewable grid and stringent energy codes, it’s hard to see how we can fully decarbonize the building sector in even 20 years, let alone at the timeline suggested by increasingly worried climate scientists. It’s the classic good news/bad news scenario (or vice-versa, depending on your mood).
3XN/GXN have revealed their design for a new CO2 neutral and climate positive addition to the Hotel Green Solution House (Hotel GSH), in Rønne on the Danish island of Bornholm. Scheduled for 2021, the new wing including 24 rooms, a conference room, and a roof spa, is expected to provide a positive climate footprint when built, a novelty in Danish commercial buildings.
