Design Studio Vol. 1: Everything Needs to Change

Architecture and the Climate Emergency

Sofie Pelsmakers, Nick Newman

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000375435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Sustainability in Architecture

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.

Creating Change with Impact: An Architect’s Manifesto

Dorte Mandrup

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter, Ilulissat Icefjord Centre, Ilulissat, Greenland, completion expected 2021. Steel and timber construction based on local conditions, ensuring sustainable solutions suited to the context. Renders by MIR.

If we do not change our behaviour radically, we will reach a point of irreversible damage to our planet within the next 12 years.

Architects across the globe must acknowledge that evidence and contextual understanding is key to sustainable design. Knowledge and skills within architecture and education need to be broadened and deepened. We need to share best practices and dare to experiment to find sustainable solutions that are more than buzzwords and good intentions.

In 2018, the world’s leading climate scientists warned that: if we do not change our behaviour radically, we will reach a point of irreversible damage to our planet by 2030. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Special Report, the dire reality of global warming is outlined and the now well-known 1.5°C target is set.¹ The report warns that exceeding this level of global warming by even half a degree will have catastrophic consequences, as it will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

To avoid such irreversible damage, the report concludes that we must make ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’.²

The following years have been spent discussing this new reality and possible ways of staying within

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter, Ilulissat Icefjord Centre, Ilulissat, Greenland, completion expected 2021. The aerodynamic form reduces snow build-up while framing views towards the Icefjord.

the targeted 1.5°C. To do so, global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 45% by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050. The built environment as an industry is responsible for almost 40% of global energy related emissions. Architects of today and tomorrow are in a unique position to create change with significant impact and must find ways of radical improvement. It is crucial that the knowledge and skills needed to design buildings without compromising the opportunities of future generations are acquired.

And it must be done now.

Call for political action

On both a local and global scale, there are a number of positive initiatives slowly moving in the right direction. Many are exploring the potentials of building in timber or reusing construction materials. However, the green transitioning in the building sector is nowhere near the necessary pace of development – especially considering the rate of new construction. It is expected that the global building stock will double as the world’s population approaches 10 billion in 2050. In observing the actual changes in the building sector over the last couple of years, it is evident that the free market neither has the ability nor the willingness to transition at the required pace.

Political action is necessary to create requirements and incentives that speed up behavioural change and motivate innovation. It is crucial for governments across the globe to step in and force all industries, including the building industry, to adapt to this urgent ecological crisis and make sustainable construction not only a priority but also a requirement.

In Denmark, it is demonstrated how political action can be a powerful tool to accelerate green transitioning. Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, the Danish government has worked consistently to find alternative sources of energy supply.³ As a result, the building industry has been forced to discuss different ways of reducing energy consumption. Decades of ambitious requirements and incentives have forced both public and private stakeholders to upscale and innovate.

Following a long tradition of calculating cost per square metre in financial terms, Danish architectural practices have now become comfortable measuring energy consumption in kilowatt hours per square metre, and all new buildings in Denmark are allowed a maximum of 40 kilowatt hours per square metre per year (kWh/m²a). Coupled with a political push for energy renovations of the older building stock and an overall tightened code, Denmark is today at the forefront when it comes to reducing building energy use.

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter, Wadden Sea Centre, Ribe, Denmark, 2017. Along the coast of Vester Vedsted, the Wadden Sea Centre appears to grow out of the flat marshlands.

Globally, operational carbon emissions (i.e. the CO₂ emissions associated with building energy use) make up 28% of the well-known 40% total carbon emissions impact from buildings, whereas the remaining 11% comes from materials and construction impacts.⁴ So, knowledge about how to build energy efficiently is extremely important for the green transitioning in the building industry.

However, it is not the solution to have tunnel vision on just one aspect of sustainability. Attention must be turned to materials, evidence and context. As buildings become increasingly energy efficient, emissions related to construction and materials will become proportionately larger. Therefore, it is crucial to start talking about how to minimise the overall environmental footprint of a building, considering operational emissions and emissions related to construction and materials, and other associated impacts on factors such as health biodiversity, waste.

The global climate goals can only be achieved if everyone works together. If we can export knowledge from countries such as Denmark to other countries, and learn from others, there is an opportunity for all of us to move forward, so that together we can find a common approach to holistic sustainability.

Using evidence and understanding materials in context

In its essence, sustainability is a science. It cannot be only engineers and other specialists finding green solutions for designs – sustainability needs to be an integral part of the architectural design process. If equipped with evidence, architects are in a unique position to incorporate sustainability into all aspects of a building’s lifetime.

Many methods, tools and certifications have been or are currently being developed to go beyond kilowatt per square metre towards a language of an environmental footprint per square metre. However, the current certifications are often too focused on operational emissions.

Sustainable architecture is context-dependent. For example, several factors make up the environmental footprint of wood in a specific context, such as the typical need for impregnation, durability under the specific climatic conditions, availability of wood in the local area and problems of deforestation. What is needed is cradle-to-cradle tools, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), that look holistically at the sustainability profile of a building and take all associated impacts into account. This starts from the extraction of raw materials and the use of natural resources to the production of materials and construction of building, to use, renovation and end-of-life with demolition, disposal, and re-/upcycling. By holistically assessing all parameters of a building’s lifecycle, we obtain data about a variety of different choices, which gives us the power to make informed design decisions. Only equipped with evidence is it possible to decrease the overall environmental footprint of a building.

It cannot be only engineers and other specialists finding green solutions for designs – sustainability needs to be an integral part of the architectural design process.

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter, Wadden Sea Centre, Ribe, Denmark, 2017. The building is an interpretation of local building traditions and rural farmhouse typology significant in the area.

Without evidence, well-meaning sustainability initiatives can in fact lead to increased overall emissions. Implementing a tool like LCA as an integrated part of our design process, end-to-end plays a vital role in upskilling and educating architects and clients alike. Being a relatively new tool for measuring environmental impact, it is still a challenge to define the standards and methods of LCA:

• how long building components should be considered
• expected lifetimes of specific materials
• how to take account of sources of renewable energy have been topics of discussion.

Collectively, the construction industry has a responsibility to collect the evidence necessary for upgrading the global industry’s knowledge on buildings’ environmental impact. Shared documentation and results make assessing a building’s footprint easier each time.

Evidence in practice

In 2016, Dorte Mandrup won the competition to design a project for the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre 250 km north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland, which truly demonstrates the complexity of a building’s environmental footprint. There is a lack of building materials in Greenland and therefore all materials are imported. As a result, a central consideration in the design process has been the weight of the materials and the ability to pack them efficiently.

Initially, it was intended to be a timber construction for the environmental benefits of wood, amongst other reasons. However, one of the consequences of climate change in a Greenlandic context is a prolonged period where the weather shifts between thaw and frost before turning to a stable state for a longer period, which has an impact on how materials, including wood, react and behave over time. Studies show that for it to be a durable solution in these conditions, the components of wood had to be very large and heavy....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Title Page
• About the Editors
• Editor’s Note
• Articles
• Profiles
• Case Studies
• Final Word
• Contributors
• Recommended reading
• Index
• Image credits