Insight30.01.24
Decarbonize for net zero
Rethinking our carbon footprint
40% of global emissions are associated with the construction industry, with pre-construction phases accounting for a staggering 11% of them. Referred to as upfront carbon, these phases include extraction, production, and transportation of materials.
Uncomfortable as the numbers may be, they also reveal the potential our industry has of being at the forefront of real and tangible change. To us, this means embracing the opportunities to reduce our footprint, seeking scalable solutions to decarbonize the industry.
With a natural-ventilation system made of eelgrass and a panel system of compressed straw, the extension of Feldballe School stands as our lowest carbon footprint to date. Rasmus Hjortshøj, 2022
We’re on a path of scaling up the use of biogenic materials – taking our learnings from Feldballe School, a project of 250 m², to Bestseller Logistics Center’s 155,000 m².
Feldballe School
Small in scale, big in impact
Though small in scale, Feldballe School’s 250 m² (2,700 ft²) school extension is radiating with the potential that arises when accountability is embraced as a catalyst for design and an uncompromising material strategy is adopted.
An exciting testing ground and an opportunity to really push our decarbonization agenda further, we explored ways of designing a building that could truly harness the natural carbon cycle. In doing so, we chose to radically rethink our choice of materials, turning to wood, seagrass, and straw. Locally sourced, natural, and bio-based, they have proven themselves viable alternatives to conventional materials.
In selecting materials that naturally absorb and store CO2 in the carbon cycle, not only did we generate immense carbon savings, but we successfully designed a building that is composed of carbon sequestering elements; a building embedded with carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
Feldballe School stands as our project with the lowest carbon footprint to date, and a significant learning on our journey towards decarbonization.
Straw is a fast-growing renewable resource and a by-product of agricultural practices all over the world. As such, when upcycled and adopted as a construction material, it translates not only into a scalable solution for carbon sequestering and waste management but a great alternative to producing new materials. Henning Larsen, 2022
Bestseller Logistics Center West located in the Netherlands, will be built primarily of mass timber, straw, and other biogenic materials. The design aims to maximize resource use and minimize waste, while increasing biodiversity in the area. Aesthetica Studio, 2023
One of the greatest predicaments in the construction sector is how to respond to rapid urbanization while also keeping the carbon emissions close to zero.
Urban Decarb
Bringing carbon into focus on the urban scale
Whilst quantifying the carbon footprint of buildings has undoubtedly come into greater focus in recent years, it’s time we acknowledge that buildings cannot be examined in isolation. As of now, the immense impact of embodied carbon on an urban scale – that is the emissions associated with the whole lifecycle of material components in our cities – is too often overlooked.
Urban Decarb marks a significant step in utilizing embodied and operational carbon as design parameters in urban planning by looking at the city as a whole – from buildings to roads, parking, landscaping, and infrastructural urban systems. In doing so, the tool is meeting the increasing call for ambitious decarbonization efforts coming from forward-thinking land and property owners.
Central to informing the carbon impact and savings relating to various design choices, Urban Decarb was prototyped for our competition proposal for the 102-acre transformation of the once-industrial harbor of Odense, Denmark.
Projects
1970
News and knowledge
Material selection matters
Upfront carbon is the carbon emitted in the production phase of products and materials, from mining and processing of natural resources, transport to processing sites, and the manufacturing phases. This is a carbon ‘cost’ that occurs before any architecture even happens and relates to the literal building blocks for realizing our designs.
In this Q&A, our Head of Materials Martha Lewis gets you up to speed on the impact of construction materials.
Applying a tailored digital workflow that integrates the structural logic of the striking wood structure, World of Volvo in Gothenberg pushes the boundaries of large-scale timber construction. Rasmus Hjortshøj, 2022
Moesgaard Museum
Time for concrete change
While today it might be clear that the construction industry’s use of concrete demands review, just a short time ago things were perceived rather differently. Moesgaard Museum is constructed almost entirely out of concrete, 9,500 m3 of it, to be exact. Estimated at 300 kg of CO₂e per cubic meter, Moesgaard Museum reaches an astounding footprint of 2,850 tonnes of CO₂e.
This is a design of which we are proud for its architectural gesture and contribution to social life, but we also know that this is a design of the past. Moesgaard boasts material choices that we simply would not make today.
A material choice of the past - estimated at 300 kg of CO₂e per cubic meter, Moesgaard Museum reaches an astounding footprint of 2,850 tonnes of CO₂e. Rasmus Hjortshøj, 2019
Constructed almost entirely of concrete, the design choices behind Moesgaard’s iconic structure are evidence of the changes needed within our industry. Rasmus Hjortshøj, 2019
Changing our footprint
Questions rather than answers
An effort to address the construction industry’s outsized environmental footprint, our exhibition ‘Changing our Footprint’ embraces the responsibility for change by presenting a hopeful and optimistic path forward.
With the theme of ‘rolling out the sketch paper,’ we exhibit some of our explorative journeys of learning and curiosity, shedding light on the meaningful concepts, possibilities, and potentials ahead. Rather than final and definitive answers, the exhibition boldly asks the difficult questions required to better our ways.
First shown in 2023 at Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin, the exhibition then made its way to AIT Arkitektur Salon in Hamburg. More recently, it was curated for the Gallery Stairs in the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen. Rasmus Hjortshøj, 2023
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An architect's guide to upfront carbon
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Open source data catalog of construction materials
Resource management and circularity
Accountability for resources
Rethinking business-as-usual, means moving away from linear economic models and altering our approach to materials, the very building blocks of our practice.
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