2023 ACSA/AIA Intersections Research Conference:
MATERIAL ECONOMIES

While interior fit-outs and renovations make up approximately half of our practice, they are often overlooked for embodied carbon reduction goals due to the larger impact that new construction projects typically have on global warming potential. To drastically reduce carbon emissions and meet IPCC carbon reduction goals, the impact of interior projects must be accounted for and reduced as well. Interiors offer many opportunities for reducing carbon and addressing material health through finishes; our research suggests that the highest-impact design elements to target are partitions, floors, and ceilings. Learn through a case study of a fit-out project within a Living Building Challenge (Materials, Beauty, and Equity petals) and LEED Platinum base building which demonstrates repeatable key strategies for achieving carbon reductions and strict material health standards. Driven by the case study’s research and design, we released an update to our firm’s free award-winning web-based embodied carbon tool to include interior partitions, which publishes additional industry data on high-impact interior design elements. Material health and embodied carbon reductions were important design drivers within this case study. The project utilized FSC certified wood features, materials made from recycled plastic water bottles, and studied embodied carbon reductions down to the smallest detail. While details across architecture firms vary, many standards such as partition details go unquestioned over time and get copied from project to project. The latest launch for our firm’s embodied carbon design tool’s partition research caused us to rethink our standard partition details and allowed us to deploy reimagined partitions which will be outlined in this case study. Since partitions on average carry the significant embodied carbon for interior fit-outs, this research elevated our practice by questioning each component of a typical stud partition. Learn about the barriers faced and opportunities found from implementing this reimagined partition, which were uncovered during the CA process. Lessons learned from this fit-out can be applied to any project, no matter the scale. This information arms architects with the ability to reimagine standard practices to reach decarbonization goals while building a healthy environment. Learn how our firm’s embodied carbon tool empowers designers to assess various building assemblies for embodied carbon impacts throughout early design and construction to make quicker, more informed decisions regarding Life Cycle Assessments. Attendees will be able to integrate low-carbon design strategies into architectural practice and understand the significant impact that material selections have on overall embodied carbon and material health when considered in each stage of the design process.

Building upon our previous research and peer-reviewed methodology, Healthy Building Network has teamed up again with Perkins&Will to continue investigating the drivers of both embodied carbon and health. This time, the focus is on the product category of insulation. Through a combination of interviews with industry experts (manufacturers, industry associations and nonprofit entities), a sampling of existing environmental product declarations, and a literature review of recently published industry guidance on both embodied carbon and material health in relation to insulation, this research team has published a guidance fact sheet for design professionals, manufacturers, project teams and green building programs. This fact sheet highlights drivers and opportunities for optimization of both embodied carbon and health when it comes to specifying insulation materials.  Balancing trade-offs in design and construction is at the crux of all our research. Our previous research focused on case studies related to flooring materials and gypsum drywall. The latest installment of insulation research captures additional nuances when examining the nature of trade-offs when looking at general sustainability features of a building. How can we ensure that we’re specifying the least toxic, lowest embodied carbon insulation products for a building, without compromising on the operational performance? This presentation will tackle those nuances, educate the audience on what to look for when specifying insulation product types, and provide overall guidance for the product category.

Building owners and preservation professionals are facing an ever-increasing environmental imperative to demonstrate whether renovating and reusing existing buildings is indeed the more efficient pathway to reaching carbon reduction goals. University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst, like many other organizations that own vast and varied existing building stock, outlined a path to reach carbon neutrality that is many years ahead of the 2050 target set by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to decarbonize statewide energy systems. UMass Amherst’s net zero carbon plan includes, among other actionable items, renovating viable existing facilities to improve energy performance and making them compatible with low-temperature hot water. This industry imperative requires validation and use of quick and accurate decision-making tools that will help us to collectively think more creatively about each building’s contribution towards reaching carbon neutrality. This case study will present the results of a research project focused on developing a framework for calculating the embodied and operational carbon impacts of retaining and renewing an existing architecturally significant brutalist concrete building – the Lincoln Campus Center building designed by Marcel Breuer and constructed in 1970 on the UMass Amherst campus.  The study incorporates existing building information and specifications, utilizes various industry-accepted energy modelling and life cycle assessment tools, and features historically and technically appropriate building retrofits/intervention options needed to optimize carbon reduction.  This graduate student-led case study is a collaboration between UMass BRUT, UMass Amherst’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the Association for Preservation Technology, Northeast Chapter. The research will generate directly applicable findings to inform low-carbon renewal approaches for similar brutalist buildings in the Northeast and it will provide a framework that can be adapted and applied in the sustainable stewardship of other architecturally significant structures. This case study also aims to promote future collaborations between academic, advocacy and industry professionals in the mission to reduce environmental impacts associated with the preservation industry.

This study addresses the need for sustainability considerations in the decision-making process for the end-of-lifespan of higher education buildings. Currently, these buildings are often demolished based on aesthetic and convenience factors, in turn disregarding environmental and social costs. To address this issue, a categorical RFP (request for proposal) assessment tool was developed. This tool enables the analysis and comparison of alternative materials management methods for higher education buildings, empowering decision-makers to reduce organizational impact. The assessment considers embodied carbon, material sustainability/disposal factors, and project financing, allowing stakeholders to make informed decisions. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this model, a hypothetical scenario analysis was conducted for Green Hall, an academic building owned by the University of Minnesota. The findings of this assessment revealed that demolition and new building construction result in over 2.1x increase in project embodied carbon, 1.9x increase in capital costs, and a 1.7x increase in total landfill waste compared to renovation. By adjusting the importance of impact categories, this tool rated renovation at almost double the effectiveness of demolition and new building construction.

Maintaining the existing built environment is crucial to achieving substantial, near-term carbon and emissions reductions in the construction industry. Retrofitting existing building stock to avoid embodied emissions from new construction and upgrading and electrifying existing buildings reduces building operational emissions. For the buildings constructed between now and 2050, more than half of their emissions will be from embodied carbon. Estimates show that reusing and retrofitting the most carbon-intensive parts of buildings – the structure and envelope – can save 50% to 75% of the embodied carbon emitted by constructing similar new buildings. Yet, a significant challenge to adopting low-carbon building practices in deep energy retrofit projects is the complexity of calculating the embodied and operational emissions of proposed designs according to the needs and priorities of various stakeholders. Recently, tools for calculating buildings’ embodied and operational emissions have been introduced and are being rapidly adopted by industry stakeholders to aid decision-making. Yet, these assessment tools often produce significantly different results, depending on the assumptions and calculations used to weigh various factors. The varied and sometimes contradictory results create uncertainty for designers and building stakeholders throughout the design process, and a better understanding of the impact these tools and their assumptions have on the design process is necessary.    This study outlines a scenario-based carbon and life-cycle assessment approach to support multi-stakeholder decision-making for deep energy retrofit projects. We argue that the fundamental concept of life-cycle thinking can better incorporate stakeholders in the design process, leading to more comprehensive and meaningful designs and life-cycle assessments. Here, life cycle thinking is not just a way to examine the embodied and operational emissions of construction projects but also a way to comprehend and visualize a broader set of linked upstream and downstream activities from the extraction of raw materials and land use change, including fuel resources and emission from transportation, to the reuse, recycling, and manufacturing of panelized retrofit systems and the operational energy reductions from mechanical and electrical improvements, to the reuse and end of life of existing and new building materials. The framework is discussed by comparing extant embodied and operational carbon and life-cycle assessment tools (CAREi, Tallyii, One Click LCAiii, among others) adopted by the construction industry. We apply various tools to assess deep energy retrofit approaches for pilot projects across Quebec, Canada. By assessing extant tools according to their life-cycle approach (system boundary, temporal framework, database used, climate/project scenario analysis, uncertainty, etc.), this study will guide designers on when each tool is most relevant within the design process and provide stakeholders with a more holistic view of the construction process that they otherwise may not have.

Building with biology will be the most important platform to transform our planet in the next 30 years. Since 2006, Synthetic Biology (SynBio) has surfaced as the fastest-growing technology in human history. Reading and writing DNA is growing at around 6 times faster than computer technology. It is an accelerating field that is allowing us to manipulate the genetic code, biology, food, and vaccines and ultimately aiming to reshape the very essence of existence. In this paper, we evaluate the development of the SynBio field and its impacts on architectural thinking, materials, and particularly in Architectural fiction. In this paper, we argue that there are 3 waves of impacts of SynBio technology in construction. Lab Grown Materials. The first generation of changes is related the rapidly growing number of lab-grown materials which are emerging as a viable alternative to traditional building materials. Companies like BioMASON, Ecovative, MycoWorks, Lingrove, Wooddoo, Modernmeadow, Tomtex, and Vitrolansinc are using various methods to grow materials in lab setting such as bio-concrete, bricks, lab-grown wood, and leather, without the need for traditional manufacturing methods. While fthis irst-generation projects have great value, the pace of technology development suggests that these may only be temporary solutions. Engineered Living Materials (ELM) A second vision for SynBio in construction is to engineer new living materials from cells, bacteria, fungi, biological seeds, or the orchestrated growth of multiple organisms in an accelerated timeframe. ELM has become an important funded research program in the past 5 years. They are being developed for a variety of applications, including biomedical, industrial applications and environmental remediation. The development of ELMs is still in its early stages, but it has the potential to revolutionize material science and transform the way we design and construct the built environment. Programmable Bio-Matter “Programmable matter” is a term used in computer science to describe amorphous material that can be coded. Projects like Claytronics, M-blocks, and Computronium are early versions of this vision, imagined to be made of robots smaller than sand. However, we argue that biology is a more sophisticated way to alter matter at the atomic level since all living organisms are made of programmed biological matter. For instance, a deer’s broken antlers can regrow almost an inch per day and know precisely when to stop. In this paper, we describe our conceptualization of this third era in a series of design work developed based on the research of the XXXX lab. We propose that DNA editing tools such as CRISPR or TALENs will be replaced by bio-matter organisms that can grow and repair themselves by coding bioelectricity. Cells communicate using electrical signals, enabling them to form networks, self-organize, and grow into new structures. In the text, we show our design experiments using recursive growth bio-matter for form-finding workflows in façades, walls, and skin structures, and we explored catenoid formations for spatial materialization. Other designs that we present have used bio-matter to grow skin structures over scaffolding made from fast-growing shrubs that later dissolve.

This case study project for two micro homes is located at a farm and forest 100 miles north of New York City, dedicated to “growing climate solutions.” The owners wanted to create guest houses that contribute to the ethos of experimentation and innovation, and invite users to immerse themselves in nature. The design deploys three strategies to reduce the buildings’ and users’ carbon footprint. A Smaller Footprint. Both homes are less than 400 sf and meet New York building code for tiny homes. Cozy inside, they expand into the landscape via generous sliding doors and a deck made from native black locust. Passive House Techniques. Walls, floors and roofs are highly insulated, windows face mostly South and West for passive heating and can be shaded in the summer for passive cooling. Negative Embodied Carbon. They are two of a dozen examples in the American Northeast using hemp lime (also often called hempcrete) as its primary wall material and are almost exclusively built with biogenic materials. At the edge of a clearing in the forest, with some great views of the Catskills, the two homes leave the clearing untouched and are tucked back into the forest for natural shading.  In the service of achieving “net zero” designers and homeowners too often focus on operational energy efficiency alone. As a result, material choices, especially for insulation, can add enormous upfront carbon emissions. Tracking the life cycle of its primary building components, the project demonstrates ways to reduce embodied carbon in buildings through thoughtful material choices. The team used BEAM (Building Emissions Accounting for Materials) by Builders for Climate Action to estimate upfront emissions (Phase A1-A3 in life cycle analysis). BEAM is one of the few tools that accounts for carbon storage in products that contain biogenic materials sourced from agricultural or forestry residues and recycling streams. Using hemp lime, cellulose and wood fiber boards as insulation saved nearly 200 kg CO2e/m2 compared to conventional closed cell spray foam and rigid XPS boards. In great part thanks to hemp, the total embodied carbon for the two micro homes was approximately 18.5 kg CO2e/m2, 10% of the average home in North America and Europe. With the legalization of hemp farming in the United States in 2018 after more than 70 years of prohibition, the project seeks to advocate for the growing and processing of hemp as a healthy and regenerative construction material and a just transition to rural green jobs in construction.  Hemp plants sequester more carbon than trees when growing and require minimal water, fertilizer and pesticides. The hurd used in hemp lime construction is considered agricultural waste – a by-product of industrial hemp grown for fiber. Hemp lime’s benefits are not limited to its negative embodied carbon. It is vapor-open, pest-resistant and provides great thermal mass, creating a very healthy interior environment. The interior surfaces were plastered using lime plaster, which acts as an air barrier.

Fabrication using experimental biomaterials made from algal, fungal, and animal derivatives has proliferated exponentially over the past couple of years amongst product designers, industrial designers, and fashion designers. Online material recipe databases have grown, perhaps most notably Materiom’s material library, which includes recipes ranging from “artichoke leaf bioplastic” to “eggshell paste for 3D printing” to “apple-pectin leather”.[1] While some new biomaterials like mycelium have generated excitement amongst architects, they often fall short when held to the standard of replacing steel or concrete on the outside of a building and/or as primary structure. However, in the context of reuse or of interiors—something between small product design and whole building design—many may have potential. In How Buildings Learn (1994), Stewart Brand broke down the typical building into six basic layers of different permanencies, pointing out, for example, that if systems (“services”) or cladding (“skin”) are too integrally linked to structure (which can typically last longer than systems and often skin), the building may be demolished before necessary. Many new biomaterials are semipermanent by design and may never be more than “stuff” (furniture/ finishes) or “space plan” (non-structural walls) (Fig. 1), but given how often those things are replaced in some programs, less permanence and greater biodegradability can be considered a benefit. I am working my way through Materiom and other biomaterial databases largely aimed at product and fashion designers, to identify materials of potential interest in architectural applications. I am simultaneously continuously conducting an existing literature review and updating a biomaterials catalog in the style of Blaine Brownell’s Transmaterials, which focuses more on materials that are closer to market. While I have produced and tested a selection of tensile materials (Fig. 2), so far the most promising materials are two compressive materials, a biochar-agar composite and a cementitious mussel shell (calcium carbonate)-alginate composite (Fig. 3). My institution maintains an experimental “micro-home” for testing new materials, for which I am developing a biochar-agar tile and a mussel shell countertop. Biochar is an industrial byproduct that sequesters carbon, and while it can be used as an additive to more traditional (and stronger) cement,[3] it makes sense as a shorter-lived kitchen tile because it insulates well and traps odors. So far, the strongest and most water-resistant bioplastic is made of gelatin and chitosan (Fig. 4), which, like mussel shell composite, is made from shellfish food waste, making these especially interesting materials in the study of waste reduction and circular economics. By fall 2023, I anticipate having more to report both on these materials and in terms of having identified more materials of note. I will also report on the limitations of some popular materials found in databases, like eggshell composites, which so far I have found to be extremely fragile and appropriate only to small-scale objects, although quite attractive when glazed (Fig. 5). I am ultimately laying the groundwork for a design-build course in spring 2025 and will have the beginnings of a formalized framework for testing strength, durability, water-resistance, flexibility, hardness, and other parameters.

Discovered accidentally in 1955 and commercialized in 1967, Tyvek is a material developed by DuPont de Nemours, Inc., colloquially known as DuPont. The high-density polyethylene material  is fibrous at the microscopic level and is used in construction for protection from water, dirt, and sunlight. Simultaneously, the fibrous plastic allows for water vapor and air to pass through, thereby allowing it to “breathe.” Ironically, DuPont’s manufacturing process pollutes its surrounding environments. The largest DuPont manufacturing facility in the world, DuPont Spruance, is located in along the James River in Richmond, Virginia. Past work at the facility has been shown to have contaminated surrounding groundwater and soil, requiring remediation to protect human health. DuPont has been doing so since 1987, nine years after noticing trichloroflouromethane seeped into the soil. This ongoing operation, near residential neighborhoods, has revealed the contamination of soil with chloroform, carbon disulfide, hexamethylphosphoramide and zinc, all parts of the DuPont manufacturing process. This has led to health risks, including contaminated groundwater under neighboring properties and discharge into the river, contaminated vapors in indoor air, and soil contamination. DuPont’s manufacturing processes has also been linked to disastrous health outcomes for communities located near the company.  The contamination and inequities caused by Tyvek’s manufacturing is a trade-off in favor of synthetic building materials that perform. In this paper, we will reveal the relationship between construction, Tyvek, manufacturing, pollution, and resulting socioeconomic inequities that arise. This paper will compile and build upon existing literature to comprehensively survey DuPont manufacturing sites and processes to understand material equity as it relates to Tyvek. The paper will take a novel approach by connecting the scale and sites of building as they relate to material sourcing. Ultimately, this paper will highlight the challenges and concerns of using Tyvek in architecture due to the requisite inequities created.

A growing body of scholarly evidence demonstrates the impact of the material conditions of learning environments on K12 student learning outcomes, yet the powerful regulatory agencies that govern the design and construction of public schools have yet to catch up to widely available research and settled science. This paper will explore recent successful efforts in the State of Massachusetts to promote the use of public health data and building science research to assess the condition of existing K12 school buildings as a first step towards planning for resilient, healthy and equitable schools for the future. The paper will be presented by an architect and public health researcher who entered the political arena and successfully advocated for a law requiring the State of Massachusetts to collect and assess building science data on existing K12 schools. This newly enacted law requires interagency action relating to over 181 million square feet of educational space, the largest percentage of building area by occupancy in public ownership. This paper will address the significance of potential state-wide regulation of healthy building materials and energy use in Massachusetts public schools. It will explore the institutional, political and regulatory obstacles to materially rethinking schools, and it will present the specific practical strategies for data collection, as developed by the authors and collaborators. Finally, it will speak to this as a case study of the evolving role of architects as advocates for the built environment. Should architectural practice become overtly political in order to confront the challenges of a changing climate?

Concrete is one of the most widely used construction materials (UNEP, 2016). Increasing numbers of projects are utilizing concrete construction (Leder et al., 2020). thirty-five percent of the world’s annual solid waste is generated by the construction industry (Llatas, 2011). Up to 7 percent of global emissions result from the production of concrete products (Anderson and Moncaster, 2020). Concrete structures have contributed considerably to this issue because they frequently require single-use formwork. Formwork accounts for 35 to 50 percent of the total cost of a construction undertaking (Peurifoy and Oberlender, 2011). Reducing formwork waste could make the construction of complex concrete structures more sustainable.   Traditional formwork often relies on basic geometries such as walls, columns, and slabs, allowing for the use of simple formwork. Standard construction formwork techniques are frequently inefficient and time-consuming (Leder et al., 2020). Due to the material’s low cost and immediate availability, concrete structures are frequently oversized. Half of the resources required to create concrete structures are devoted to formwork (Jipa and Dillenburger, 2022).   To overcome the lack of geometric freedom and resulting material inefficiency of standard formwork systems, many have developed knit, subtractive, and additive formworks to construct custom concrete casts. Various materials have been used to construct concrete formwork using additive manufacturing. The use of rigid plastics generates a substantial amount of waste, as most of the plastic is not recyclable. De-moulding is a tedious and labor-intensive process limiting the geometric possibilities.   Fabric formworks are presently under investigation due to their low material consumption and capacity to create intricate shapes. This type of formwork ranges in size from facade panels to small pavilions. Due to the required tension applied to the knitted formwork during casting, their applications and scalability may be limited.   Expanded PolyStyrene (EPS) is a common material for subtractive concrete formwork. This process generates waste through the milling or carving of the raw material and the disposal of the used formwork. Other subtractive research has focused on recyclable materials, such as wax and ice, although the need for environmental control and scalability limits the applications of these materials.  This presentation and resultant paper will discuss the potentials latent in 3D-printed, recyclable, water-soluble formwork for a more circular and complex concrete casting using Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) and paper clay. First, both fabrication methods were tested via multiple case studies. These studies show the advantages and limitations of either material. To reduce the required amount of concrete, these formworks incorporated material optimization using finite element analysis. These case study outcomes will be analyzed and compared. Third, the procedures of removing the formwork will be documented and compared. The results of the case studies indicate that these formwork workflows could reduce the embodied carbon emissions of concrete casting by recycling formwork and optimizing material usage.

In today’s context of climate crisis and dwindling finite resources, circular design is an approach across scales and fields of study that seeks to reuse materials over multiple lifecycles as an alternative to traditional virgin material extraction and use.  There is great underexplored potential for architecture and the built environment to advance these principles using new tools which have expanded in recent years with emerging technologies and community-based organizational efforts.  This paper and presentation introduce a new formal platform based at MIT for advancing, disseminating, and reflecting on new ways to work with circular material supply chains in architectural design and construction. Entitled Odds and Mods, the focus of this effort considers two material typologies in the circular economy: (1) odds, or irregular building parts whose high variability comes from minimal processing of natural resources or from imprecise production of waste/demolition (e.g. whole round timber, concrete rubble, masonry castaways), and (2) mods, or modular components that are self-similar due to standardization of industrial material production (e.g. dead stock, regular offcuts, reclaimed repeated building units, etc.).  Odds and mods together constitute a robust and underutilized supply chain of materials for architecture that can support an alternative, low-carbon future. Both odds and mods require a different approach to the design and construction of architecture than typical contemporary procurement processes allow for.  Instead of specifying materials and building components with high precision and detail, where parts are acquired and customized to meet the aspirations of an abstract and unconstrained design process, circular design with odds and mods must center itself on the limits and possibilities of what is already available.  Material realities of an available stock actively can and must contribute to the development of design concepts, assembly detailing, and construction logics, often in ways that are legible and potentially poetic in final built outcomes. The challenges of this alternative, materials-centric approach to architectural design have thus far limited its breadth of application in practice.  Examples at the margins, from informal construction to boutique pavilions, serve as inspiration but have not translated into mainstream uptake.  The Odds and Mods platform seeks to push circular material culture towards the center of the architectural discipline, with an emphasis on scalability, accessibility, and collective, community-based processes.  In particular, new, inexpensive technologies allow for iterative, flexible design exploration with digitized inventories of available material stocks.  These can connect with localized community efforts to collect, document, store, process, and deploy traditionally undervalued and irregular building components, in contrast with globalized, homogenized supply chains.   Through a series of three semester-long options-level design studios, Master of Architecture students will explore these topics with a suite of emerging technologies and computational tools, coupled with rediscovered historical techniques and integrated community fieldwork.  In parallel, a series of short workshops focused on computational tools, fabrication techniques, and community partnerships will expand the platform to other students at MIT, including undergraduates and research-based graduate students from disciplines within and beyond architecture.

The circular economy (CE) is a holistic approach to sustainability with the tremendous potential to contain resource use within planetary boundaries while simultaneously increasing economic benefits1. According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD): a circular building optimizes the use of resources while minimizing waste throughout its whole life cycle. The building’s design, operation and deconstruction maximize value over time using: • Durable products and services made of secondary, non-toxic, sustainably sourced, or renewable, reusable or recyclable material; • Space efficiency over time through shared occupancy, flexibility and adaptability; • Longevity, resilience, durability, easy maintenance and reparability; • Disassembly, reuse or recycling of embedded material, components and systems; • Life-cycle assessment (LCA), life-cycle costing (LCC) and readily available digital information2 The WBCSD definition is a leap forward in circular building consensus, but also lacks hierarchy that directly impacts design decisions, and building performance. For example, in the fourth bullet-point, reuse and recycling are both offered with equal weight, when in actuality reuse has a greater net benefit in terms of carbon, energy, water and waste. In fact, confusion specifically about recycling is prevalent among US architects3. This team of researchers is interested in bridging knowledge gaps with accessible resources. One resource we’re developing is the Building Circularity Impact Graphic, arranged on a grid with embodied energy on the horizontal axis and value retention on the vertical axis. As resources undergo processes such as extraction, manufacturing, repair, deconstruction, and repurposing, embodied energy accumulates. In the transition from raw material to product to used resource, retention value also increases. The diagram can be used as an analytical tool for existing buildings, and also as a design-thinking tool where general relative relationships are made visible. The designers’ goal would be to make decisions that recirculate high embodied energy and high value resources and prevent these investments from becoming waste. Our team analyzed twenty-five case studies, documenting each buildings’ relationship to key circularity principles and strategies. The analysis of two in-depth case studies through the proposed Building Circularity Impact Graphic demonstrates how the diagram acts as a useful evaluation tool. The paper also documents challenges, innovations, and collaborative approaches based on interviews conducted with case study designers and material suppliers. In conclusion, the Building Circularity Impact Graphic and the case study research address educational barriers through providing accessible resources that architects, educators and students can use to initiate their journey toward circular buildings.

A university design-build studio designed and constructed a residence with bearing walls made of scoria (pumice stone fines mixed with water and cement) to test its efficacy in resisting heat transfer in climates with a wide diurnal temperature swing. Because it is a locally sourced and low-cost material, it has potential for use in the provision of affordable housing; more so if it contributes to lower utility costs[i]. Challenges during the design and construction processes for this alternative building material brought unexpected results that created a path for future innovation. The design hypothesis was that thick mass walls made of scoria would be effective in retarding thermal transfer to interior spaces, adequately maintaining temperatures within the comfort zone with minimal HVAC intervention. Thermal sensors were placed throughout the wall assemblies in order to record thermal transfer from the exterior to interior wall surfaces; temperature data from each sensor was logged every 15 minutes for one year. Challenges that arose before construction commenced involved the categorization of the scoria with regard to the building codes (earthen versus concrete construction and their concomitant performance criteria).  No building permits for scoria structures had been previously issued by the municipality, so the avenues for permit review were untested and required much documentation. The design-build studio worked to determine scoria mixtures which met the code requirements[ii]. Much studio time was also given to full scale mock-ups of walls with bond beams before contract documents were completed and the actual construction began, in order to clarify building methodology. An unexpected post-construction dilemma was that the wall system, while highly effective at mitigation of thermal transfer, was porous enough that the assembly could not pass the code-required blower door test. Because of the air pockets naturally occurring in pumice stone, the walls could breathe slightly. All other locations for air infiltration were sealed with caulk and foam after each failed blower door test. The air exchange rate decreased but still surpassed the required threshold. The head building official for the city agreed to examine actual measured data as evidence of performance according to the code requirements, and the project team negotiated a waiver of the blower door test by providing a month of daily data on thermal transfer to demonstrate effective environmental control even with air infiltration through the scoria walls. The thermal data and the waiver were entered into the public record, serving to inform future designs and code reviews for thermal mass assemblies. These public records serve as precedent for data provision about thermal mass designs as an alternative to air tightness testing.

ACAW is a hands-on research initiative for architects and façade engineers to explore the vast possibilities of terracotta as a performance material and architects can envision their terracotta project without impact of client interest or budget. Purely to assess performance, the ACAW workshop offers the opportunity to produce and present an individualistic terracotta façade design to test as a sustainable practice in architecture. We proposed the use of architectural terracotta in focusing sunlight on a zone of high efficiency photovoltaic panels. Terracotta in baguette shapes layered into a screen would be fixed to a building to reflect sunlight toward the façade. Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) is gaining widespread acceptance as an energy harvesting surface cladding material. It represents the cutting edge of building technology. Our goal was to use architectural terracotta as a brise solei – a feature that would reduce heat gain within a building through sunlight deflection. We wanted to capture the reflected thermal energy, so our terracotta application had to be met with a performance goal. Through the application of a specific glaze, the terracotta would reflect the sun’s rays onto the BIPV panel optimally, requiring fewer panels to achieve a desired energy output. PV panels absorb sunlight and convert the energy into electricity. We envisioned our terracotta application on a residential, south-façade building in New York, 29 degrees off north-south, per the Manhattan grid. We determined our brise solei would be applied to the building’s façade 30 feet off the existing façade, below a spandrel and above a zone of window glass. Once situated, we performed a sun analysis to ensure our terracotta paneling system would perform thermal capture without being compromised by shadows of the needed materials. The possible orientation of the terracotta as a façade screen varied. The materials could lay horizontally, vertically, or even be twisted. Research revealed that layering the material in a horizontal, shelf configuration would optimize the gathered energy reflected onto the PV panels, across seasons. Favoring the location of the terracotta in relation to the building’s spandrels—the materials which separate the stories of buildings—properly shaded the building interior while also harvesting maximum thermal energy. At the University at Buffalo were able to physically assemble and test our design. We received solar panels and the necessary tools to formally document the terracotta reflection and associated wattage reading. Our team conducted a reading on a cloudy day at NYC orientation. The first test was with the terracotta brise soleil covered by a matte black sheet to determine the power output of the panels by themselves. The second was with the terracotta panels uncovered to determine the total power output of the assembly and the third was with the BIPV panels shaded from the sun to determine the power output with only the reflection of the brise soleil onto the BIPV. The tests indicated an increase of 40-60% in the power output of the panels with the glazed terracotta.

Hannah Arendt says “Our whole economy has become a waste economy in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appeared in the world, if the process itself is not to come to a sudden catastrophic end.” The changing consumption pattern of people and lack of proper solid waste management systems are causing nuances and health problems especially in the developing regions. Disposal of waste should definitely be planned carefully, however it is important to retrospect the raw material. Much of the discarded material still has potential and value to it and can be used for other purposes (Gorgolewski 2017). This negligence in terms of discarding materials often comes with the definitions and assumptions associated with the waste. Strategies to reuse, recycle, up cycle, repurpose materials should be thought of in order to reduce waste generation. Building and construction industry ranks third in global waste production and contributes to almost 40% of the world’s carbon emissions (Miller 2021). Materials that are discarded as waste by other industries can be absorbed into the building industry and add more value to it. Americans on an average consume 3.9 million tonnes beverage cans yearly out of which 2.7 million tonnes are landfilled and it takes 200 to 500 years for aluminium to fully degrade. Similarly 4.3 billion bottles of wine per year are consumed and most of the corks end up being in landfills. The properties of both these materials are extremely suitable for building applications and have been used as façade, flooring, roofing systems. The research aims at studying and finding out possible facade applications by juxtaposing cork which is a natural material and aluminium which is a synthetic metal. The design primarily intends to create composite panels using corks and beverage cans that can be used as basic units for a larger façade system. The lightweight nature of the panel makes it an ideal material for use in architectural façade applications. The production workflow to make the aluminium and cork panels use analog methods and tools widely available in both industrialized and constrained resources contexts facilitating its applications to different places. Some steps include unrolling the cans and seaming by pinching and pressing them to obtain panels of approximately 7 by 7 inches. On the other hand, the cork is grinded into an aggregate and mixed with an adhesive to finally cast on the back of the aluminium panel. In the last part of the work, the panels were tested as a cladding for a geodesic dome frame structure. The idea behind repurposing beverage cans and corks and leading the cradle to cradle approach is to create a circular economy in which waste is eliminated, and resources are continually reused.

This paper investigates the transformative potential afforded by the paradigmatic shift with the integration of land-based learning and traditional ecological and indigenous knowledge (TEK) into the Architectural curriculum, design research and practice. It uses the architectural design studio led at the -School of Architecture at -0University located in -as a vehicle for this investigation. This Architecture-Landscape studio is based within the undergraduate program at the -. Situated within Northern Canada, the School has a tri-cultural mandate (English, French and Indigenous). Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Carriers are part of the faculty working with students. Students engaged in the cladding of a wigwam, adding onto the existing bent-wood structure which had been built by previous second year cohort in Founder’sSquare, located on the main campus of the University. The structure is used as a teaching lodge for the Indigenous Studies program year-round. The project began as a collaboration between the University’s Architecture and Indigenous Studies programs. Birch bark was harvested from the forest at the end of June and dried and cut into 3’ square pieces. These birch bark panels were distributed to students the first day of class. Spruce trees were scored as part of class prep with the Indigenous Elder in August. Spruce gum was then harvested from trees and its sap clarified into a pitch which was used as a water-proof natural caulking for the wigwam. Students then clad the wigwam, translating oral knowledge imbued with understandings of intrinsic relations to landscape, ecology and sacred landscapes into the architectural project. A series of architectural drawings were created of the structure in-situ, imbuing their land-based learning into structures with living and regenerative materials. The boundaries between architecture, landscape and ecology are pushed with direct land-based learning. Students harvest building materials while learning about both their inherent properties and latent potentials as living and resilient materials, as well as serving as a new model for the architectural curriculum, design research and practice. Building on the lessons learned from the studio, I will then discuss the implementation of a design research framework based on land-based learning for socially-engaged community design working in collaboration with the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nations Community as part of a funded grant. This will include Indigenous mapping in an industry partnership with Firefly, an Indigenous GIS (Geogrpahical Information Systems) organization, including the translation of data collection and other cognitive mapping into data visualization which can inform design based on regenerative materials, assemblies and processes. This initial mapping research will inform pilot projects comprised of layered interventions creating social infrastructures, shared community spaces, as well as performative infrastructures, materials and ecological practices based on land-based learning and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). This is in direct opposition to modern practices predicated on the use of extractive materials which are having a detrimental toll on ecosystems, the natural  landscape, environment and human health. I will conclude with synthesizing the lessons learned from the land-based learning studio and collaboration and suggests new models of practice engaging rengenerative materials, assemblies and processes.

Objective: Contemporary construction in the US Gulf South is currently dependent on industrialized building materials that have a heavy carbon footprint and are a primary contributor to our present-day climate crisis.  Can locally available materials such as earthen mediums, often thought of as sub-optimal in quality for building in hot wet climates, be re-appropriated and support a more sustainable way of building for future generations? Methodology: In our current, energy intensive, building culture the ever-increasing effects of climate change will continue to become more severe and adversely impact the well-being of our regional communities.  This consequential shift requires a rethinking of conventional building practices to help mitigate the risks imposed by an industry altered environment.  Made from locally accessible materials, compressed earth block design and building methods offer an ecologically balanced and energy-saving approach to our current reliance on unsustainable building habits. Working in teams, students were introduced to and analyzed precedents constructed of earth at varying locations around the world with the intent of investigating the viability of building with compressed earth blocks in a hot wet environment.  These research inquiries provided a foundational understanding of potential earthen material applications relative to specific environmental contexts, social cultures, and construction traditions.  This base knowledge was applied with respect to the distinct regional characteristics of soil quality, climate, and local customs found in the US Gulf South to design earth blocks and the ways in which they can be incorporated into wall assemblies (image 1).  Earth block molds were constructed and tested through the process of fabricating blocks.  After the initial experimentations, the performance of each mold was evaluated for deflection, ease of assembly/disassembly, and ease of block removal.  Similarly, the resulting quality of the earth block was analyzed in terms of shape distortions and surface cracks (image 2).  The block soil mixture compositions comprised of varying percentages of silt, sand, clay, water, and additives were assessed and refined in response to the unique geometry of each block design (image 3).  Once the mold designs and soil mixture compositions were fine-tuned and modified to make the necessary improvements, the block fabrication processed commenced with the goal to fabricate enough blocks for a 4’x4’ wall (image 4). Achieved Outcomes: Responding to the necessity for a less energy intensive, carbon neutral, way of building in the US Gulf South prototype wall assemblies were designed and constructed using compressed earth blocks as the primary component (image 5).  Through an awareness of local contextual parameters and an in-depth geometric and compositional analysis, the earth block and wall designs offer a sustainable way to build in the US Gulf South.  Block shapes, sizes, their ability to interlock with other blocks, and potential to filter light and air were carefully considered.  Based on the research, design, fabrication, and assemblies developed by the student teams, earthen mediums can be re-appropriated for use in hot wet climates to support a more ecologically sensitive way of building for years ahead.

This paper outlines a framework for an expanded model of building practice at the intersection of horticultural processes, community-centric models of mutual aid, and indigenous approaches to ecological stewardship. In particular, the research builds on the Native American principle of reciprocity – the notion of mutual interdependence between humans and a more-than-human ecology [1]. The Seed School is a co-operative early education center in rural Josephine Country. In conjunction with [client redacted], a non-profit horticultural education center, the project is a response to the Oregon Child Care Capacity Building Fund for new preschools in underserved rural settings [2]. Our work began by asking how a building can arrange material, labor, economy and time in a non-extractive manner.The research considers how site-grown hemp, used for construction as hempcrete, can initiate a reciprocal and circular interdependency within a local community. Hempcrete is a compelling construction alternative for many reasons. Composed of hemp, lime, and water, hempcrete is a carbon negative material, and unlike wood products, hemp is a rapidly renewable resource. Hempcrete’s shortfall is speed, requiring over four months of curing time compared to traditional concrete’s 28 days. The proposal leverages this slowness by reimagining the school as a space of cyclical production – a temporary and adaptable space shaped by precast hempcrete panels during their curing period [fig 1]. Reconfigurable as a kit-of-parts system, the panels are produced by community labor before being distributed back out to the community for residential construction. Four strategies for a renewable building are developing in the paper: [1] Generative Processes: The research explores the potential of incomplete and transitory construction that is intrinsically intertwined with ecological and social systems. [2] Slowness: the work sees hempcrete’s innate slowness as an opening to a different relationship to environment and material. Embracing slowness, akin to the ethos of the slow food movement, situates hempcrete outside of the market economy and its demand for speed. It instead aligns the buildings renewal with the crop cycle. [3] Reciprocity: The research explores reciprocal interdependencies of energy, labor, knowledge, and material. These feedback loops are less interested in the what the building is than what it can do – the feedback it produces for the immediate site, the local community, and the wider region. [4] Participation: Building on models of mutual aid, the work considers how construction itself can be a form of voluntary exchange, leveraging low-skilled labor as a way of inviting participation from local stakeholders. A co-operative model that allows exchange of time and effort for otherwise unaffordable, but urgently needed services: materials for home building, child care, a community kitchen, and medical clinic. The framework of relations situates humans as active stewards, rather than consumers, and suggests the promise of a deliberately incomplete architecture that is in a process of continual evolution. It’s a model of a different relationship that stakeholders might have with a building – seasonally renewed, it is grown, shaped, and cared for by a participatory community – closer to a garden than a commodity product.

This paper advocates for a shift in sustainable thinking in architecture, emphasizing the crucial role of building lifecycle decarbonization in the design process. At present, the carbon footprint associated with constructing buildings is overlooked or disregarded, as it is typically addressed after preconceived designs have been finalized. This misplaced prioritization of financially driven performance metrics, combined with a historical emphasis on the reduction of energy consumption and a lack of regulation in carbon accounting, has resulted in significant amounts of carbon emissions. To effectively address the climate crisis as architects, it is essential to establish an ethos of material-centric design that integrates decarbonization into every stage of the design process. This paper begins by providing a contextual background on sustainable thinking in architecture, tracing its roots back to the environmental movement of the 1960s and 70s which prompted a reevaluation of energy consumption. Consequently, operational energy emerged as a measure to track and limit a building’s energy usage, leading to the development of innovations such as low-energy light fixtures and more efficient windows. The focus on operational energy at the end of the 20th century resulted in the establishment of LEED—a metric-based performance standard—in 1993 and the creation of the first Passive House in Germany in 1991. Other programs, such as Zero-Energy Buildings, Net-Zero Buildings, and Energy Star Ratings, aimed to minimize a building’s energy consumption. While this emphasis on operational energy significantly improved building performance, it failed to consider the carbon footprint required to produce the energy reduction. In the early 21st century, as sustainability discussions expanded to encompass a broader understanding of materials and processes, more efficient buildings became codified, and renewable energy sources gained prominence, embodied energy began to represent a significant portion of a building’s energy consumption. Consequently, the carbon emissions of a net-zero building are entirely embodied. Furthermore, for buildings that are not net-zero, if the consumed energy comes from renewable sources, it does not contribute to carbon emissions. This historical analysis underscores the need for a new design paradigm centered on decarbonization as the primary lens through which we assess and address the environmental impacts of buildings. Many high-performance buildings actually generate more carbon emissions during their materials’ production and construction than the emissions they save through increased energy performance.1 Existing standards like Passivhaus and Net-Zero fail to account for the carbon impact of materials and construction methods. For instance, Passivhaus buildings often employ high-carbon synthetic insulations, while Net-Zero buildings frequently rely on concrete, highlighting the misalignment between current sustainable agendas and future carbon reduction objectives.To address the primary driver of climate change—carbon emissions—this paper proposes integrating decarbonization as an intrinsic aspect of the design process. Decarbonization should be viewed as the logical progression in sustainable design. Thus, this paper issues a call to action for architects to adopt a systems-thinking approach that prioritizes embodied carbon reduction while establishing a universally accepted standard for measuring carbon emissions2, enhancing architects’ education on carbon implications, and shifting disciplinary priorities towards embodied energy and decarbonization.

Building designers ability to impact performance is greatest early in the design process, however most embodied carbon tools are required detailed information about material systems or specific product selections that have not been made early in the design process. This presentation is a case study of a University of Massachusetts Amherst project that has set the target of total building decarbonization of both operational and embodied carbon.  Focusing on the early design phases of planning and schematic design, the case study will illustrate the process undertaken to incorporate embodied carbon into early design decisions.  Utilizing parametric explorations incorporating embodied carbon information and tying in operational carbon and cost information to set the project up to achieve its zero carbon goals with the established state budget. The team developed a matrix of nearly a hundred structural options with embodied carbon information in concept design, as well as dozens of other materials systems option to establish the building’s embodied carbon targets and paths for offsets.  Incorporating this information into parametric studies, the team parametrically tied this information into design explorations to allow the design to be informed by its embodied carbon impacts and set it up to achieve it’s total zero carbon goals. This case study of a University of Massachusetts Amherst project will demonstrate a design process that leverages embodied carbon into early design decisions to achieve building decarbonization.

This paper is part of a study investigating the applicability of using a combination of embodied carbon reduction through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Affordability by Design (AbD), and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) as an integrated methodology to adjust and balance carbon and cost in housing developments. The paper explores strategies to design low-carbon, efficient, and more economical housing alternatives in the US and comprises a hypothesis based on the literature review and culminates in a case study. The case study involves carrying out Whole Building LCA (WBLCA), energy use estimation, and LCC of a typical house in Northern New Jersey to evaluate the status of cost and carbon, followed by examining the outcomes of designed scenarios to reveal further the dynamics. The scenarios are mainly developed based on AbD principles, referring to efficiency and sufficiency in design in addition to low-carbon and low-cost material and assembly replacements. The procedure includes conducting multiple LCAs, and LCCs using a BIM model of the house and comparing before and after results. The WBLCAs consider both embodied and operational carbon associated with the given building. Throughout analyses, the study remains in the BIM environment to facilitate the process and strengthen the integration of tools and the model, resembling how an architect may incorporate the methodology in common design developments. The results show that in the case of this two-story 3500 square foot house in New Jersey, a reasonable and functional efficient design and downsizing could lower life cycle carbon and cost by 11-24%. Regarding material choices, the results vary depending on replacement scenarios. By replacing carbon-intensive materials, around 10% embodied carbon reduction seems achievable; however, the cost shows reluctance to change considerably.

Converting a log to rectilinear lumber adds value, but also incurs identifiable losses. Puncheon’s were a pre-industrial timber product: a log flattened on three faces and left “live” on the third. They were typically employed as a one-way mass-timber floor slab, not unlike dowel laminated timber or DLT. In 2022 an instructor at Dalhousie University (Jannasch), his co-authoring grad students, and ten teammates compared the values gained and lost in puncheons vs. conventional lumber, both in the production process and in their application as spanning members. Some of our investigations were purely geometric, some explored and re-evaluated established data, and some entailed load-testing of specimens in a specially designed apparatus. We also built a puncheon bridge and other structures to explore the tectonic and expressive potential of this construction.  Production of standardized lumber entails three losses. Material is lost to lower-value slabs, planer chips, and sawdust. Mechanical performance is lost as cutting interrupts continuous grain and as structural depth is limited by the smallest diameter of the log. Informational losses are incurred where visual grading to coarse categories systemically undervalues the structural capacity of a particular piece of lumber. Even MSR or MSG (Machine-Stress-Rating or Grading) of individual pieces involves de-valuing assumptions and procedures.  We assessed material losses geometrically, by enumerating areas of kerf and volumes of off-cut. The costs of energy and other associated inputs vary with circumstance, as do values of the secondary products, but the base quantification is exact. Economic implications were worked out for a range of assumed conditions. Mechanical performance was evaluated in the actual performance of actual specimens. To this end we acquired some small diameter logs and poles and devised a portable sawmill capable of the puncheon cuts, both parallel and non-parallel. A test-rig capable of nine-point bending was built, approximating the distributed loads of span tables. We tested the same log after successive milling cuts, measuring the performance lost at each step. A few logs were cut into tapered and double-tapered members of rectangular cross section, as another way of increasing the structural value extracted from a log.  Our protocols quantified the incremental changes of each specimen quite precisely, eliminating the substantial errors due to variation in grain, fiber-quality, and moisture content. This represented an informational gain. Other dimensions of information were analyzed within and against published data, and in the performance of commercial lumber tested in the same rig.  This research touched on several topic areas pertinent to Material Economies. DLP or puncheon slabs are a traditional and vernacular building material assembly that reduce material mechanical and losses. Static testing under intended load cases is a form of materials modelling that by reducing informational losses, can impact project design and delivery. As with conventional DLT, the absence of steel fastenings and glue in DLP facilitates deconstruction, adaptive reuse, and composting. The expressive aspects of puncheon slabs highlighted in our bridge could also play a role in a larger paradigm shift to material responsibility.

In the periphery of the rapidly urbanizing Texas Triangle Megaregion, East Texas has 12 million acres of sustainable and productive forest land. Forest inventory and analysis shows that the total volume of Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) timber grown annually in this region exceeds the amount harvested to supply the forest products industry by over 90 percent.[i] Essentially, this fast-growing, regenerative timber species has the potential to grow a thirty-ton truck load every nineteen seconds! Despite the potential environmental, economic, social impact to rural and urban Texas communities – even more so to stakeholders in design, manufacturing, and construction delivery sectors – most new buildings in development, don’t consider the possibility of integrating regionally sourced mass timber systems into projects. The architectural design problem and barriers at hand are technical and conceptual; they present gaps in awareness and understanding, not confronting an opportunity that could significantly contribute to circularity, resiliency, and equitable construction culture in the territory. It is both a professional and academic challenge that demands a shift in mindset, both in how material design decisions are evaluated and cultural imagination. As two architectural design faculty members based in this area – working in the areas of community engagement, low-carbon construction/manufacturing, computational design techniques, and new media – our current faculty design and teaching activities utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) system Diffusion Models[ii] as a generative tool to investigate timber construction typologies. We are systematically running a series of studio-based exercises that study and experiment with exterior and interior elements. Our processes start with conventional parts and iteratively transform and refine their articulation and assembly. These operate across multiple scales of imagining scenarios of building design, from detail to urban settlement patterns. We are specifically aiming to think about how this can be deployed within intermediate scale housing design problems. As design speculation, we are interested in formulating strategies that employee both high degrees of repetition/seriality and variation/customization. We believe there can be a wood language that is both optimized in its economy of means and aspirational; modest and generous. Such bookends demonstrate our attempt to negotiate and discover opportunities for innovation in the current division between supply and demand. On the one hand are the constraints and limitations that current mass timber manufacturers in the United States are confronting with supply chain backlog[iii], and on the other the unprecedented potential of digital design tools as articulated by Mario Carpo in The First and The Second Digital Turn.[iv]

Building on previous research, we have invented a novel modular building assembly that can be easily shipped and assembled – and then taken apart. Rejecting permanent components of a building and adding instead the notion of customizable interior and exterior enclosures, can result in a more sustainable world – one based on a shared economy conditioned by varying rates of change and considered as its own ecosystem. The parts can be updated as technology moves forward, or as the occupant changes their needs. As a result, all parts are capable of being propped-up or clipped-in. The design and fabrication is a mixture of high and low technologies – high-performance glazing, light-weight wood framing, and high-performance insulation, weather and air barriers. Components include: 1.   Frame: We have developed a novel framing system that uses struts and straps to achieve structural and thermal performance. We developed a system that consists of three prefabricated lightweight components: T-studs, struts, and high-performance membranes. The invention consists of the T-studs staggered between each side of the wall connected by compression struts, joined together in continuity. The structure of the wall functions by diagonal bracing, creating an even distribution of loads. This wall assembly provides flexibility to residential construction, allowing it to be stackable, affordable, continuous, and freestanding.  2.   Skin: We have demonstrated how to remove sheathing from a high-performance enclosure. This is to bring the slenderness, lightness and strength of manufactured components into the realm previously dominated by the diaphragm and compression column concept of building. In addition, we have made interior finishes and exterior cladding easy to construct, replace, and repair. We have demonstrated the rapid configurability of the exterior and interior enclosure – the possibility to assemble, disassemble and reconfigure components at will. By-products of this work include the reduction of skill needed for proper installation and replacement and the potential for a new aesthetic language for residential cladding and trim. 3.   Synthetic Enclosure: We have joined these concepts into a complete building system. We looked at the ideas of recyclability and replace-ability as concepts for conserving our natural resources and re-imagining our physical environments. This project offered students the opportunity to focus on advanced applications of technology in Architecture. Students explored the relationship between design and technology within high performance building structures and skins, and strengthened their’ ability to conduct research, explore material performance, and enable validation of design concepts based on applied technology. Questions that were answered during this research include: Aesthetics – what is the image of a high-performance wall in the 21st century? Resources – how does a synthetic enclosure conserve our natural resources? Technic – how does one reconcile the thick wall of an energy-efficient home with a lightweight skin? Flexibility – can the character or configuration of a high-performance wall change over time? A full-scale proof-of-concept prototype was built on the RISD campus during the 2023 spring semester.

As an early career designer, I was eagerly making calls to material suppliers and commercial plant growers. Confident in the progressive nature of the project, I described the social values of the work and the mission for a more just built environment that would result. I received a call back and was told that under no circumstances would the supplier support, through the sale of their goods, the creation of the project, its “politics,” or the community it was meant to serve. This stark statement of injustice has, for me, forever linked the politics and practices of material suppliers with the material ecologies of projects. If a project aims to support progressive social or ecological ends, yet the material production and exchange of capital supports injustice, repression, or even political or racial violence, is the project doomed before it is even completed? This paper will articulate this question and the many challenges associated with it. It will first examine the limited ways that designers can currently interrogate the social impacts of material choices, on the production end, within major architectural and landscape architectural rating systems. For example, of the over 200,000 products in the Mindful Materials database less than 5% are even categorized under the Social Health and Equity framework. Within rating/evaluating systems like LEED, WELL, and SITES material acquisition and production are often not considered within the social equity components of the ratings. Questions of social justice are often only considered with regard to the giving of contracts (based on race), hiring of local workers, the program and purpose of the project, community engagement during the design process, and as a post occupancy evaluation to name a few. In a truly circular analysis of a project, we must look at how the proceeds of a project’s design and construction impact the world and where those funds go. Articulating these questions and challenges will lead to a series of theoretical proposals for where within a project’s design we might be able to account for the way project funds are spent and where within rating systems the design and construction industry might reach a higher standard for what a just project looks like. This will begin to trace the impacts of a project throughout its full material ecology and political economy. This proposal recognizes the difficulty of asking these questions and the harder task of trying to answer them but will end with a call for action. A call to recognize our collective responsibility to go beyond the surface understanding of a material and trace its potential to impact political, economic, and social systems in addition to ecological and environmental regimes.

As the effects of climate change intensify, architects must critically examine the widespread impacts of new material production in the built environment and develop systematic approaches for reusing existing material. In recent years, a wide range of research methods have been developed for analyzing the reuse potential of building material at various scales, combining remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and geographic information systems. [1] However, these studies fail to consider several important questions in the extended life cycle of those materials. How and where will the reused materials be deployed? Which groups or individuals will gain the most from reuse applications? Who loses out in this process? This paper treats these questions as a starting point, joining a growing body of research on the reuse potential of existing material stock with a critical intervention that focuses squarely on social justice. [2] In this respect, the paper subscribes to the “constructive view” proposed by philosopher Olufemi Taiwo, which describes “a historically informed view of distributive justice, serving a larger and broader worldmaking project.” [3] The question becomes, material reuse for whom? The research consists of three phases: data collection, urban extrapolation, and design speculation. In phase one, working with state authorities and local contractors, the research team gained access to a block of sixteen vacant rowhouses slated for demolition in a historically disinvested neighborhood in Baltimore. Before demolition, we completed a photogrammetric aerial scan to establish a baseline volumetric figure of habitable space, and between the period when demolition was completed and materials were transported to waste processing facilities, another scan established a ratio of building material to habitable space. Using a suite of digital tools, the team built a detailed point cloud and textured mesh of both scans for further analysis and illustration. In phase two, we built detailed digital models of individual rowhouses to establish a ratio for each material to the volume of habitable space. Using the photogrammetric scans and digital models, we extrapolated the specific composition of material stock of vacant rowhouses to the urban scale. For phase three, we proposed an addendum to the deconstruction mandate currently under consideration by the Baltimore City Council, in which harvested materials would be geotagged and tracked, such that any profits from the reuse of material return to the communities from which they derive. [4] Moreover, the policy addendum would encourage the design and construction of public amenities in these communities using reclaimed material as a primary component. To demonstrate the potential of this policy, the paper concludes with design proposals generated in a graduate-level course at XXX that prompted students to develop spatial interventions in the public realm using materials from the deconstruction of a vacant rowhouse. Beyond the mere appeal for a more ecologically sensitive stance on materiality in architecture, this paper argues for “the just world to come,” in Taiwo’s words, by foregrounding the distribution of benefits that attend material reuse.

The triple bottom line, which commits to measuring environmental, social, and financial impacts, is critical to fully evaluating building materials, products, and projects. By addressing the environmental, financial, and social impact streams, the intricacies between carbon and energy, profitability, health and circularity can be assessed to gain a more complete evaluation of sustainability of a product. While environmental and financial performance have been receiving increased attention in the construction industry, social impacts have yet to be examined and regulated (Hossain et al. – 2018).  For environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), stringent ISO regulations are incrementally addressed within building codes [such as the low-carbon concrete code development for the county of Marin in 2021, led by Bruce king]. Similarly, financial life cycle cost (LCC) also entails mathematical quantification of future and recurring payments discounted to a net present value. To that end, an extensive set of tools and certifications were developed to standardize the quantification of our buildings’ cost, energy, and emissions. On the other hand, social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is an emerging field that has yet to be fully represented in standards.  S-LCA is a quantitative and qualitative method that aims to assess the social concerns of human health, wellbeing, and social welfare. From the extraction of its raw components to its end of life, a construction material’s production, transportation, use, and disposal inherently engage a variety of stakeholders at different levels: from workers to production teams, designers, construction builders, occupants, and demolition contractors. The social impact of these involvements can –and should– be evaluated through a number of categories defined by stakeholder groups and social/socio-economic criteria, such as health and wellbeing, social equity, local employment and workers conditions, community impact and resilience.  Our research was conducted to investigate and compare the social performance of earth and bio-based materials with conventional materials throughout their life cycle, from cradle to grave. Using the UNEP/SETAC guidelines as well as a number of precedent studies in the field, this research consisted in the development of a S-LCA framework that could reflect the social impact of construction materials from the extraction of their raw components to their end of life. The developed S-LCA tool was then used to compare the social impact of earth and bio-based materials with conventional materials. The results showed that natural materials have a better social impact than conventional materials in all the life cycle stages of their cradle to grave. Overall, natural materials outperform in terms of health and safety for workers and users, impacts on local communities, and regional sustainability. Regarding the worker conditions, conventional materials dominate when it comes to employee benefits and professional training. This can be justified by the fact that conventional material businesses are more industrialized and embedded in today’s capitalist system. Further research is currently conducted to differentiate and compare a broader range of materials and understand how the location and organizational management of different plants/businesses impact the overall social impact scores of building materials.

The Brook Hill Bothy is a prototype for material reuse and multispecies cohabitation developed from the remains of a simple 6′ x 8′ structure located at the edge of a northern hardwood forest. The site housed a weathered wood-frame shed for over thirty years, nearing the end of its life. This project proposes a re-pairing of the shed—a structural repair, a repair of ecological relationships, and a re-pairing of its materials with the multispecies networks in which it is enmeshed. This modest case study is a proof of concept for a new ecological design process. Our hope is to develop a scalable alternative working method for designers seeking to make the most of the existing buildings and materials we have immediately at hand. We have already undertaken the meticulous deconstruction of the shed to measure and account for its material and energetic value. During the summer of 2022, we carefully separated all building components, including de-nailing, cleaning, and treatment of pieces, and went through inventory, measuring, sorting, digital modeling, and storage of these pieces for later reuse and repair. This process was a taking stock—not only of useful materials, but of relationships they enabled: a roof beam hollowed by carpenter bees’ burrowed nests; floor joists that framed a home for a family of possums; a windowsill where sparrows perched. We have now designed a “new” structure from this stock—a writing/drawing studio to be constructed in July 2023—using only the materials from the original shed, those that can be found in abundance locally, and those that have already seen at least one useful life. In addition to the structure’s human occupants, the project provides new spaces for the many other species who called the former shed home over the decades of its declining human use. Called a “bothy” after simple dwellings in the Scottish Highlands left unlocked for anyone to use, the project extends this shared resource beyond the human realm. The ultimate design goal is to soften the boundary between human and non-human inhabitants that characterizes modern architecture’s tendency toward purification, and instead find ways to construct and detail the building as an edge habitat: one that better acknowledges each species’ coexistence and mutual dependence.  Donna Haraway writes of the reconstituted refuges of “mortal critters” living united together as one way to survive environmental crisis. The Brook Hill Bothy seeks to be one such refuge. We use the term sistering to denote this joining of forces: human with non-human; old material with new; the natural with the manmade. A construction term typically used as a verb, sistering means to strengthen a beam by fastening a second alongside it, but expanding this definition beyond structural support means seeing it as a method of repair at many scales, across multiple systems. The bothy brings seemingly disparate pieces together in this way, an act of sistering that blurs boundaries, breaks down categories, and demonstrates interdependence—a joining that makes each of them stronger.

This paper examines the relationship of embodied carbon and compressive strength of wood waste cement composite cylinders utilized in a sculpture located in an interior public walkway, constructed by hand with readily available tools. The sculpture entitled Cordwood Redux, was used to examine the relationship between cement and waste wood ratios on compressive strength and embodied carbon. As both an art piece and an experiment the work allowed our team to begin to establish the limitations of a material such as cement bonded wood fiber blocks without the use of high-tech production facilities or chemical mineralization processes. The resulting strength to embodied carbon ratio allowed us to identify challenges and opportunities in the utilization of non-standardized wood waste from a local wood shop which varied in particle size from wood chips of a ¼” to sawdust. Redux itself refers to the bringing back or restoration of an object of study. In cordwood redux, a version of the traditional cordwood construction or firewood stacking is reconstituted through composite Portland cement and waste wood logs. The stack is organized by each log’s environmental impact, with the wood waste constituting a sequestering of carbon and the cement constituting an expenditure of carbon. The variable mixtures result in a gradation of color, tone, texture, and compressive strength as a result of the cement content. Reminiscent of firewood stacking techniques, traditional cord wood construction consists of short logs stacked and connected with mortar. The resourceful inventiveness of early practitioners was the result of a creative reuse of available material. Cordwood redux doubles down the creative reuse of material to reconstitute the cordwood wall. Without the ability to mineralize the wood on-site long-term durability of this particular experiment is a challenge, but the lack of environmentally damaging chemicals used in the wood mineralization process allows this material to potentially fore go durability for lower environmental impact. The end result is a set of elements, or cylinders, which range from carbon negative, when accounting for biogenic carbon sequestered in each of the blocks, to carbon neutral cylinders with a higher cement content. Strength testing establishes a baseline for evaluation of this material which is then reflected in the stacking of the sculpture. This paper will delineate the results of this experiment identifying challenges and differentiating itself from processes which utilize wood mineralization to identify the potential of a cement bonded wood fiber construction typology that can be completed with tools that are readily available from the hardware store. This forgoing of high-tech manufacturing processes suggests an accessibility of this particular material for wider adoption and experimentation.

In today’s construction industry the dominant model for resource consumption is linear, beginning with natural resource extraction and ending with the landfilling or combustion of building materials[i]. According to an Environmental Protection Agency 2020 report, this model generates 600 million tons of construction and demolition debris in the United States annually – more than twice the amount generated by municipal solid waste[ii]. Of this total, 25% is delivered to landfills, 75% is recycled, and less than 1% is reused when calculating debris by weight.[iii]Current trends prioritize commodity recycling requiring resource intensive processes to repurpose materials versus a circular system that takes advantage of a materials’ inherent ability to be reused. Redirecting these building materials back into our communities could reduce global CO2 emissions 38% by 2050[iv]. Municipalities are recognizing the environmental, economic, and social benfits of circularity and are beginning to implement policy initiatives to incentivize waste diversion[v]. University architecture design build pedagogy, rooted in community engagement, offers an opportunity to challenge the typical design and construction process by employing, documenting, and analyzing a circular material approach to small scale community projects.  This case study explores the benefits of deconstruction and reuse processes in the design, planning, and making of a 1,300sf outdoor classroom in partnership with the non-profit organization, Joppy Momma’s Farm. Located in one of North Texas’ most intact Freedman’s communities founded in 1872, Joppy Momma’s mission is to disrupt the systemic social, physical, health, and economic challenges facing its community by empowering, educating, and creating greater opportunities for individuals and families through regenerative agriculture[vi]. This project employs two primary strategies for practicing radical material responsibility: (1) designing to incorporate harvested and reused building materials in the outdoor classroom and (2) designing for the future deconstruction and salvaging of the outdoor classroom materials for new purposes. These strategies are implemented in conjunction with larger project objectives to celebrate local history, foster community connections, and build organizational capacity. Implemented design tactics are thus multi-faceted and include the deconstruction and reuse of siding from local residential demolition for use as shade screening and the reuse of shipping containers from the adjacent rail yard as a farm office and produce stand. Design and construction processes include developing a disassembly plan, building with simple open-span structural materials, using easy to access mechanical fasteners for connections, utilizing single-stage processed materials that do not contain sealants, adhesives, etc. and planning for future dismantlement, among other things. Presented research will discuss the process benefits as it relates to project costs, lifecycle embodied energy, neighborhood stewardship in respect to local history and memory, and educational objectives as well as challenges including instability in planning for reuse supply, time and labor necessary for deconstruction, and incentives to encourage future building material reuse. Lessons learned from Joppy Momma’s Farm’s outdoor classroom suggest that small incremental changes within design and build processes can result in considerable environmental, economic, and social benefits for local communities, municipalities, and the larger public.

According to Architecture 2030, buildings generate nearly 50% of annual global CO2 emissions of which 20% is made up of embodied energy/carbon in materials and construction (Architecture 2030). Mass timber construction offers the potential for significant reductions in carbon emissions from the sequestration of carbon in the wood itself, avoided emissions (using wood in place of steel and concrete) and more efficient mechanized production techniques. As US building codes are updating, mass timber architecture is expanding rapidly in both construction and domestic fabrication (FastCompany).  In assessing current mass timber manufacturing practices, the project team has identified an opportunity to generate well-designed human-scale furniture pieces from commonly occurring offcuts in the factory setting. Mass timber products such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) and mass plywood panels (MPP) exist at an architectural scale, commonly 40 feet in overall length and minimally 2-3″ thick.  In a lifecycle assessment of CLT led by CORRIM (Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials) they find that an approximate 11.6% of a CLT panel mass results in offcuts or off spec (CORRIM, table 3, p 17). Speaking directly with local job programmers and designers, the team anecdotally confirmed that panel drop on a job commonly sits at 10% and can sometimes grow to 30% for geometries that do not nest efficiently.  This drop percentage exists as fenestration cutouts, panel ends, and nesting remnants, a visual graphic of which is demonstrated in Susan Jones’ documentation of her own house design in her book Mass Timber: Design and Research (Jones) .  Odd shapes and rarely uniform, these smaller areas are limited in architectural application and are typically destined to be chipped and downcycled for biomass/cogen, held in indeterminately long-term storage at panel factories, or even relegated to the landfill relative to adhesives used and local environmental legislation (Waugh Thistleton). This research demonstrates the potential for upcycling these scraps by creating modular furniture parts as the scraps are produced in the factory, which instead preserves more embodied energy, sequestered carbon, and could generate additional profit as a value-add offering for mass timber manufacturers while reducing their storage needs and wastestream expenses.   Through partnerships with local research institutes and industry material production plants, the research team has produced a series of digital and built prototypes to test production viability and market interest. With an eye towards open source file sharing, the extended goal is to provide designs to interested mass timber manufacturers and design firms working with mass timber in order to reduce unnecessary material inefficiencies in the mass timber production cycle.  Furniture prototype designs are conceived with sensitivity for mass timber production panel CNC machinery and optimization for minimal added machining time using simple cuts and programming for a single cutting tool operation. Once current mass timber building stock ages out, there is additional industry discussion about design for disassembly (Souza)(Think Wood).  The research team suggests that furniture objects once again become viable pursuits as panels are resized or identified as less-than-ideal due to scarring and blemishes from their former applications.

This paper presents new research on the economic and cultural extent of the Swedish timber empire. In the 17th and 18th centuries, empowered by its naval and political strength, Sweden’s Empire extended over most of the territories around the Baltic Sea, including present-day Sweden, Finland, and parts of Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Germany. The empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the reign of King Charles XII (1697-1718). Although Sweden’s Empire receded after the Great Northern War (1700-1721), since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there has been a rapidly expanding procurement by the Swedish state and Swedish companies of forest lands in countries formerly occupied by the Soviet Union, including the three Baltic states. Research conducted by the authors has discovered that 12% of all forest land in Latvia now belongs to Swedish stakeholders.   The architecture and construction industry is implicated in society’s response to the climate emergency, not least because of the potential of increasing applications of wood (instead of carbon-emitting materials) to usefully sequester vast amounts of carbon in buildings. The demand for wood and paper-based products is increasing. The gross value added (GVA) of wood products (including construction timber and building materials) to European Union in 2020 was €37 billion (Eurostat, 2022), employing an estimated one million people. (CE-Bois, 2021) Yet the growing demand for wood threatens Europe’s forests and the biodiversity they support. One-quarter of Sweden’s unprotected old-growth forest has already been lost to commercial forestry in only 16 years. At the current rate, what remains will be lost in the next 50. (Ahlström, Canadell & Metcalfe, 2023).  As countries begin to exhaust the maximum productive capacity of their own forest lands, this paper explores the hidden power structures underlying the global race for resources. These transnational relationships can neglect not the biodiversity but also the cultural identities of territories from which these resources are extracted. By working towards a holistic quantitative and qualitative map of Sweden’s timber empire, the paper will discuss how architectural research methodologies can provide social and creative processes to critically map the extent of transnational material networks. It explores how the phenomenon of transnational forest ownership is changing local cultural, social and economic landscapes in the Baltic region. Using new data about the extent of Swedish-owned forest land in the Baltic region, it explores how Sweden’s accumulation of forest land is affecting the cultural, social, environmental and economic landscapes in one Baltic country. Looking ahead to forthcoming research, it speculates about how small-scale architectural interventions can serve as situated mapping tools to reveal the hidden impacts of industrial forestry.  The research has been supported by UmArts at Umeå University in Sweden, the Future Forests programme at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and the Vilnius Academy of Arts artist’s residency program in Nida Art Colony, Lithuania.

619 Ponce, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is a 114,000 square foot, four-story mass timber office and retail building. The building is part of a larger development immediately west of the historic Ponce City Market building, on what was formerly a surface parking lot. Since the building’s developer is also an owner of Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) timberlands in Georgia, the opportunity to regionally source the timber to be used for the building presented itself. However, in comparison to the European mass timber industry, the Southeastern U.S. regional supply chain is much more diffuse. Typical for the region is a siloed series of steps between forest owners, managers, loggers, mills, mass timber fabricators, and finally, installers, with no infrastructure in place to track specific timber through the various separate businesses that operate in each step of the supply chain. Due to the specific nature of the developer’s business model and ESG goals, there was interest in exploring a regionally-sourced mass timber building even if it was potentially a higher financial first cost. The carbon reductions, alongside supporting the growth of the regional mass timber industry, were major factors in the evaluation of the project’s feasibility. In 2021, via HB 355, the State of Georgia enacted an update to the 2004 GA Carbon Registry, expanding it to include building products and materials that can demonstrate carbon sequestration. In this context, a collaborative team of architects, engineers, consultants, forestry professionals and industry partners came together to design, source, fabricate, and construct the first mass timber building in Georgia to be built out of regionally-sourced Southern Yellow Pine. The project expects to be the first privately-owned building to receive carbon credits via the Georgia Carbon Registry. To evaluate the carbon impacts of the building an analysis was performed to compare the Final Project Design (SYP sourced and manufactured regionally) to three alternative schemes: Alternate Option 1, where the superstructure is completely concrete instead of timber (typical material in Atlanta market for office) Alternate Option 2, where timber is sourced from Austria (European Spruce) Alternate Option 3, where timber is sourced from the Pacific Northwest (Douglas Fir) The lifecycle stages that contribute to embodied carbon considered in this study are A1-A3 and A4. This study also considers embedded carbon, which is the carbon that trees will absorb and sequester during growth. The embedded carbon of all timber options is greater than the embodied carbon due to lifecycle stages A1 through A4, resulting in a net negative to the total carbon footprint of a building. The Final Project Design results in the least embodied carbon from lifecycle stages A1 through A4, although Alternate Option 3, where timber is sourced from the Pacific Northwest, yields the most carbon sequestered. Even without considering embedded carbon, alternative 1 (the mild concrete building), resulted in almost three times as much carbon emissions as the highest carbon mass timber scheme (alternative 2, timber sourced from Austria).