Three closely related articles were stored away in my browser bookmarks and it’s time to spread them around. First, “The Carbon Footprint of Material Obsolescence” by Blaine Brownell. The article looks at the life-cycle carbon cost of various construction materials. We need to consider not just the cost (meaning money, pollution, and carbon liberated) of materials’ creation and use, but how much does their maintenance pollute? How messy is their end-of-life demo and disposal? How much can be recycled to mitigate the end-of-life costs? My comment here is that adaptive reuse, by extending the life of most of the materials in a building, spreads the costs over a longer period of time, which is always good.
Next up, “Architects risk ‘reputational Russian roulette’” over demolition projects” by Gino Spocchia. The article reports on a talk by Barnabas Calder, where he told architects (in the UK, but also in general) that the profession needs to move away from demolition projects towards reuse and ‘radical retrofit’. They have a responsibility to look past the usual solutions to a client’s program. My only comment is that it applies to everyone in the AEC community, not just architects.
Finally, “Dear Architects: If You Really Want to Be More Sustainable, Start Prioritizing Reuse Projects” by Erin McDade and Lori Ferriss. The article summarizes and discusses the sixth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report is 3000 pages long, so a blog post is not the place to describe the whole thing, but a key sentence is quoted in the article: “…renovating an existing building typically saves 50% to 75% of the embodied carbon that would be emitted by constructing a similar new building, especially when the most carbon-intensive parts of the building, the structure and envelope, are reused.” As they say, no comment.
