Spotted: Right now, people are undergoing massive efforts to make sure humanity slashes its greenhouse gases. From individuals making eco-conscious choices to researchers trying to uproot the wasteful systems we use, our global response strengthens day by day. Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) researchers are a player in this effort, with their new fire-safe building claddings made from recycled glass.
Alongside materials technology company Livefield, the RMIT team worked to make the composite cladding, which the team claims is cheap, structurally robust, and fire-resistant. The sustainable innovators use 83 per cent recycled glass to make their claddings, along with relatively low amounts of plastic binders and fire-retardant additives.
According to lead researcher Associate Professor Dilan Robert, we make a lot of glass waste. In fact, about 130 million tonnes of glass are produced yearly, with only 21 per cent of this being recycled. “By using high amounts of recycled glass in building claddings while ensuring they meet fire safety and other standards, we are helping to find a solution to the very real waste challenge,” explains Robert.
After passing the central compliance requirement of claddings set by Standards Australia, panels were installed at RMIT’s Bundoora campus to prove the technology’s feasibility.
Springwise has previously spotted other innovations that strive to make building materials more sustainable, including a rubber made from recycled rubber and construction waste and a technical wood designed around the sustainable use of wood.
Architects are increasingly using mass timber in the hopes of creating net-zero buildings but carbon assessments are missing key sources of potential emissions, researchers tell Dezeen in this Timber Revolution feature.
The standard method for determining a building’s overall carbon footprint is a whole-building life-cycle assessment (LCA) that breaks down emissions at every stage – from the sourcing of raw materials to their ultimate disposal.
These calculations tend to indicate significantly lower emissions for timber structures compared to those made entirely out of concrete and steel. But experts warned that LCAs only tell part of the story.
“LCAs do not typically consider anything that happens in the forest,” said forester and timberland manager Mark Wishnie.
“And the land management side is, from a climate perspective and a biodiversity perspective, enormously important,” added Steph Carlisle of the Carbon Leadership Forum research group. “That’s really where all the action is.”
End-of-life “very, very important”
Because so few mass-timber buildings have been constructed – let alone demolished – researchers are also unable to reliably forecast what will happen to engineered timbers at end of their life and what emissions this would entail.
“There’s not a lot of data available to predict end-of-life and that can be very, very important,” Wishnie said.
This leaves both researchers and architects with an incomplete picture of mass timber’s climate impacts, which urgently needs to be addressed if the industry is to scale up sustainably without adverse effects on the environment.
Mass timber offers one potential route to achieve net-zero buildings. Photo by George Socka via Shutterstock
“We need better transparency and traceability,” Carlisle said. “When architects use tools and they don’t necessarily know what’s going on behind them, they can really mislead themselves about the real emissions.”
“If we get this right, it has such incredible potential,” added Robyn van den Heuvel of the Climate Smart Forest Economy Program. “Not just for the built environment but also to ensure forests are sustainably managed.”
“But there are incredible risks of getting this wrong. It could result in the exact opposite effects of what we’re trying to create.”
Badly harvested timber has higher embodied emissions
Timber’s climate potential lies in its ability to sequester large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere during its growth – in contrast to common building materials like concrete and steel, which mostly just produce emissions.
As a result, mass timber has been widely hailed as a way to help architects make their buildings net zero and, by extension, help the built environment mitigate the 13 per cent of global emissions that stem from the construction of buildings and the materials used in the process.
Research indicates that substituting wood for steel and concrete in mid-rise buildings could reduce emissions from manufacturing, transport and construction by between 13 and 26.5 per cent, depending on the building’s design, the exact wood products used and where they are shipped from.
Forest management is an important part of the equation, not just because it can help to prevent deforestation and protect biodiversity but also because it has a huge impact on a forest’s ability to act as a carbon sink.
Felling all the trees in a forest at the same time, in a method known as clear-cutting, can generate significant emissions by disturbing the soil and releasing the carbon it stores, which accounts for almost 75 per cent of a forest’s total carbon stock.
When this is combined with other harmful practices such as converting old-growth forests into tree plantations, this could actually make a timber building more emissions-intensive than a concrete equivalent, the IISD suggests.
“It’s neither true that all wood is good, nor that all wood is bad,” said Carlisle. “Architects really need to understand that it matters where your wood comes from.”
Forest certifications falling short
However, none of these important land-management impacts – whether good or bad – are reflected in typical life-cycle assessments.
“They don’t account for an increase in forest carbon stock or a decrease in forest carbon stock, an increase in forest area or a decrease in the forest area,” said Wishnie.
“Often, if you’ve got that wrong, it doesn’t matter what else is happening in the value chain, you already have a bad carbon story,” agreed van den Heuvel, who leads the non-profit Climate Smart Forest Economy Program.
To some extent, these concerns are addressed by forest certification schemes – the most comprehensive being FSC, which covers crucial factors such as forest health, biodiversity, water quality, and Indigenous and workers’ rights.
But these certifications do not require forestry companies to track and quantify how different management practices impact the carbon stock of a forest, which makes them impossible to represent in the LCAs used by architects and building professionals.
6 Orsman Road is a demountable timber building by Waugh Thistleton. Photo by Ed Reeve
“Right now, I have no way of representing FSC-wood accurately in a life-cycle assessment model,” said Carlisle, who is a senior researcher at the Carbon Leadership Forum.
“There’s a lot of work happening on the certification side to do that research and publish it so it can come into our models. And we really need it because it’s not going to be sufficient in the long run for certification to be a stand-in.”
FSC certification is applied to 50,000 companies globally, making it harder for architects to discern which of these companies provides the best forest management and the most sustainable, lowest-carbon product so they can vote with their wallets.
“As the user, I can’t really make choices,” said Simone Farresin, one-half of design duo Formafantasma. “I can’t evaluate if one seller is better in community support or another in sustainable growing. It’s certified and that’s it. It’s not specific.”
“When you’re looking at materials, you have all these different grades of quality,” he continued. “And we need to reach the same in terms of sustainability – we need to be able to detect these different grades.”
“No consensus” over end-of-life emissions
Another area that is lacking in reliable information, and therefore hard to represent in LCAs, is what happens when a mass-timber building is demolished.
“There is a lot of debate about how to model end-of-life and it gets really contentious really quickly,” said Carlisle. “There is no consensus. The fight is very live.”
If a building was designed for deconstruction and its timber components are reused, this could offer substantial carbon and ecosystem benefits – providing continued long-term carbon storage while reducing the need for renewed logging as well as for emissions-intensive steel and concrete.
A small number of architects have begun to deliver demountable mass-timber buildings to facilitate material reuse, such as Waugh Thistleton’s 6 Orsman Road in London.
However, most timber demolition waste today ends up in either landfills or incinerators, with both scenarios resulting in some net emissions.
“Depending on what country you’re in, that waste looks very different,” said van den Heuvel. “But that also has a really massive impact on your total carbon story.”
In the case of incineration, all of the carbon stored in the wood would be released into the air, negating any storage benefits but potentially generating renewable electricity in the process if burned for biomass energy.
In a high-quality modern landfill, on the other hand, engineered wood products are estimated to lose only around 1.3 per cent of their carbon, although part of this carbon is released as methane – a powerful greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
“This is counterintuitive to people,” Carlisle said. “But you see very small emissions at end-of-life from landfills because that material is largely considered sequestered and stored permanently.”
“We can’t aim for perfection”
Crucially, estimates about end-of-life emissions are mostly based on products like medium-density fibreboard (MDF), which are less elaborately engineered than structural materials such as cross- and glue-laminated timber and so may respond differently.
“There is more uncertainty around what will actually happen at end-of-life because there are so few mass-timber buildings,” Carlisle said.
Researchers and institutions such as the Carbon Leadership Forum and the Climate Smart Forest Economy Program are working hard to fill in these gaps. And ultimately, they argue that governments must set national and international standards to ensure responsible sourcing and disposal if we hope to accurately assess and realise mass timber’s climate potential.
But in the meantime, all parts of the timber value chain – from forest managers to manufacturers and architects – should be more transparent about their carbon accounting.
“I would hate to see a world in which we stop everything to make sure all the certification is perfect,” said van den Heuvel. “Because buildings are still going to get built. And if we’re not using mass timber, we’re using a product that’s going to be even worse for the environment.”
“We’re running out of time, so we can’t aim for perfection. We should aim for good enough and transparency around it so that others can improve.”
Timber Revolution This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
US architect Morris Adjmi took cues from tenements that once housed Italian immigrants to create a new mixed-use building with a decorative brickwork facade.
Rising seven storeys, Grand Mulberry is located on a storied site in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood.
The seven-storey building was informed by New York tenements
To design the new building, architect Morris Adjmi – who leads an eponymous local studio – took cues from the area’s history and architecture, including its tenement buildings dating to the 19th and early 20th centuries.
For the street-facing elevations, the architect designed a rounded corner and a grid of rectangular, punched windows surrounded by red-orange bricks. A distinctive “Morse code-like” pattern was created using bricks with domed extrusions.
The building has a rounded corner and a grid of rectangular windows
The domed bricks are arranged in a way that evokes the tripartite facade of a building that once stood on the site, making it a “ghost of the past building”, said Adjmi.
The ground level contains space for retail and a new home for the Italian American Museum, slated to open in 2024. The upper portion of the building holds a total of 20 condominiums.
The exterior is covered with domed brickwork
“Given the project’s setting, the objective from the onset was to design a building that was contextual yet unmistakably contemporary,” the firm said.
“With a nod to the traditional Italianate tenement embedded in its bones, Grand Mulberry is a brand-new building that does not completely erase the site’s history and that doesn’t necessarily make passersby mourn for the New York that was.”
The domed bricks were arranged in a pattern that references a building that previously occupied the site
At the base of the building, the ornamental bricks – hand-moulded by Glen-Gery– form horizontal bands. At the middle and top levels, they are arranged to evoke pediment windows and arched widows, respectively.
“Looking carefully, one can see the mark of the traditional tripartite façade that consisted of a base, a middle and top layers, with differing details and brickwork used for each portion,” the architect said.
“At the same time, the bricks’ path and dimensionality create a visual texture that adds energy to the block, building on Little Italy’s distinct flavour.”
The rear elevations are faced with a combination of metal panels, concrete and bricks.
The building is topped with a cluster of volumes that is set back from the streetwall and wrapped in light grey cladding.
Within the building, the team drew upon traditional materials and techniques, the architect said.
Traditional materials were used in the interior
In the lobby, one finds black-and-white, mosaic-style flooring and plaster finishes. The residential units feature wooden flooring, marble countertops and decorative tile backsplashes.
Overall, the building “encapsulates traces from historical architecture while engaging with the neighbourhood”, the architect said.
Grand Mulberry contains retail space and apartments
The building is named after its location on the corner of Grand and Mulberry streets – a site once occupied by brownstones that partly dated to the 1830s.
The site was famous for housing a bank that operated from 1882 to 1932 and was used by Italian immigrants.
Bricks with domed extrusions decoration the exterior facades
Born in New Orleans, Morris Adjmi began his career working with the Italian architect Aldo Rossi in the 1980s. After Rossi’s death in 1997, Adjmi established Morris Adjmi Architects in New York. The studio also has an office in New Orleans.
Its other projects include a 25-storey, glass-and-steel tower in Philadelphia that contains apartments and a hotel.
Record-high utility prices have homeowners eager for short- and long-term solutions to reduce costs and improve the efficiency and value of their home. Operating an HVAC system takes the largest toll on energy use in most homes and drives up utility bills. And it’s absolutely crucial to the occupants’ comfort. Debunking a few common heating and cooling myths reveals ways to lower energy costs and lessen the impacts of climate change.
MYTH #1 My other appliances don’t impact how well my HVAC works
Most appliances and tools use energy even when not in active use. Items that require a lot of energy to operate (e.g., dryer, dishwasher, EV charger) increase a home’s peak load, i.e., how much electricity it needs to pull from the local grid at a given moment. Running several energy-intensive or inefficient appliances at once, particularly at a time when energy costs are high (summer afternoons, for instance) can not only trigger higher bills and strain the grid, but also cause the appliances themselves to run less efficiently.
Look up your utility’s rate schedule to understand when costs and demand are high, and try to plan around these windows. Not every task can be completed overnight, but waiting to charge your EV or run the dishwasher will help you avoid peak pricing and keep other appliances and systems, like HVAC, more efficient and effective.
Whole home energy monitoring devices and platforms provide a deeper understanding of how energy is being used and wasted in your home. These are available at a variety of price points and identifying simple actions that could lower utility bills may make that upfront cost worth it! In the same way, upgrading to smart appliances with advanced technology and those with ENERGY STAR certifications could prove worthwhile investments in the long term.
MYTH #2 I won’t notice a difference in energy costs with a smart thermostat
The US Energy Information Administration estimates that HVAC operations account for over 50% of home energy use. That’s a large portion of your utility bill and an area where even small changes to your habits can make a big difference.
Smart thermostats have grown in popularity in recent years. These devices are designed to take the guesswork out of saving energy while also keeping your home comfortable. Many come with suggested eco-friendly settings or profiles that run automatically and will raise or lower your set temperature during portions of the day to maintain efficiency and keep costs low.
Even just upgrading from a traditional thermostat to one that allows for programmable digital temperature controls can help lower costs over time. While you may not notice an immediate difference on your next bill, the consistent changes will reduce costs and preserve the health of your HVAC system. For instance, setting a thermostat back 7-10 degrees for eight hours a day can lower utility bill costs by 10% annually.
MYTH #3 Relying on space heaters in drafty parts of my home is more efficient
Space heaters are notoriously inefficient and expensive to run. If you’re bringing in space heaters to keep areas of your home warm while your heating is also running, you have a larger weatherization problem. Drafts come from improper or worn sealing on doors and windows, in attics and even around electrical outlets. Cranking up your heat or plugging in those space heaters is not a long-term fix and will cost you more over time as heat continues to escape in these places.
The same goes for summer. If you find yourself turning to window or wall units and additional fans because your central air conditioning isn’t up to the job, insulation issues are to blame.
Addressing these issues can be simple. Look for DIY weather-sealing solutions like adhesive barrier tape that can be applied to windows and doors. A professional home energy audit may also come in handy here if initial repairs don’t do the trick. These assessments can cost as little as $100 to $150 and identify places where larger, planned repairs can lead to terrific cost savings over time. According to the EPA, air sealing and insulation upgrades in attics, crawlspaces, and basement rim joists can save homeowners an average of 15% on heating and cooling costs.
MYTH #4 Setting my thermostat higher/lower will heat/cool my home more quickly
Maintaining a consistent, eco-friendly temperature is always the smarter choice for energy efficiency and the health of your HVAC system. The DOE recommends a set point of 68 degrees during winter months and 78 degrees for summer. While it can be tempting to bump the temperature down several degrees on a hot day when you’re returning home from running errands and craving a blast of cool air, doing so will not cool your home faster and, in fact, a lot of energy can be wasted in the process.
Even if you want variation in your home’s climate throughout the day—keeping things cooler at night or warmer on winter days when you work from home, for instance—try to stick to a schedule and consistent set points when you do make changes. This is another instance where a smart thermostat with automated and programmable options can help you save energy and reduce bills by sticking to your plan. No matter what type of thermostat you’re using, you can also look to fans, shades, dehumidifiers, and other tools to help maintain comfortable temperatures in your home.
Easing the path to savings
To begin addressing these myths, you simply need to commit to behavioral changes that require little to no financial investment. There are also larger upgrades and projects, including installing renewable energy technologies and storage to lower a home’s carbon footprint and decrease utility costs over time. But that undertaking will always be preceded by an energy and weatherization audit and any needed improvements.
While many homeowners still may be unsure where to start, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced last year extended a 30% tax credit for rooftop solar and energy storage, and expanded rebates and tax credits for a range of home improvements and technologies. By easing the point of entry for millions of homeowners, the IRA offers attractive options for bolstering home efficiency and value through clean energy.
The author:
Greg Fasullo is CEO of Elevation, a whole-home energy solutions company that provides energy efficiency repairs, solar panels, and energy consumption education across the country.
An exhibition at Chatsworth House including designers including Michael Anastassiades, Faye Toogood and Formafantasma, features in this video produced by Dezeen for the stately home.
In total, 16 international designers and artists created pieces that respond to the interiors of the building.
The exhibition introduces new art pieces and objects into the house and garden
Some responded by sourcing materials from the property itself, while others focussed on themes and ideas taken from decorations within the interiors.
“The designers of the exhibition have responded to Chatsworth in all sorts of fascinating ways,” said co-curator of the exhibition Glenn Adamson.
“Throughout you really see this kind of conversation between the present and the past.”
Jay Sae Jung Oh designed a throne using musical instruments
The exhibition continues Chatsworth House’s 500-year-long history of working with leading artists and designers and collecting an extensive collection of art and objects.
“An artist’s new work can create a new way of looking at these spaces,” said Chatsworth House Trust director Jane Marriott.
“It can capture their imaginations and hopefully inspire them to explore Chatsworth in a different light.”
Toogood’s monolithic furniture creates a pensive space within the exhibition
British designer Toogood took over Chatsworth’s chapel and adjoining Oak Room. As a nod to the historical use of the space as a place of worship and gathering, she created an installation of monolithic furniture made from bronze and stone.
The sculptural forms were designed to evoke ecclesiastical structures and to reflect the local landscape.
“These objects give a sense of meditative calm, a sense of massiveness or monumentality that feels appropriate to the space,” Adamson said.
Dutch designer Joris Laarman designed a series of benches for the exhibition
Two stone benches by Dutch designer Joris Laarman made from locally sourced gritstone , which was the material used to build the house itself, were placed in Chatsworth House’s gardens.
The surfaces of the benches were carved with undulating patterns in which moss and lichen have been planted and will continue to grow over time.
Other objects in the exhibition include a throne-like seat wrapped in leather made from musical instruments by Jay Sae Jung Oh, a fibrous cabinet designed by Fernando Laposse, and sinuous steam-wood sculptures by Irish furniture maker Joseph Walsh.
Laposse’s fluffy cabinet is made from agave plant fibres
Another section of the exhibition, which occupy Chatsworth’s Sculpture Gallery built in the early 19th century, features pieces by British designer Samuel Ross.
Ross’s pieces were designed to echo the surrounding sculptures, mimicking their form to invite viewers to imagine the body that would recline on them. The designer has used a material palette of stone and marble to further reflect the sculptures within the gallery.
Chatsworth’s collection contains art and design pieces spanning 4,000 years
“It’s a kind of collision of past and present, of the artisanal with the technological, the classical with the industrial,” Adamson said.
“It’s a great example of how the show in general tries to talk across generations, across centuries.”
Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth is on display at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire until 1 October 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Photography is courtesy of the Chatsworth House Trust.
Partnership content
This video was produced by Dezeen for Chatsworth House as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen’s partnership content here.
Spotted: Research has shown that frost is a “significant weather event” that has a direct impact on crop growth, which, in turn, has a substantial impact on yield and profits. However, it can be more difficult to predict frost than some other weather phenomenon, such as rain, due to the effects of microclimates and local terrain. Uruguayan company The Climate Box has developed a product that assesses the risk of frost for orchards and vineyards and can tailor passive and active frost protection measures for individual microclimates.
The system uses temperature data loggers placed at strategic locations around a farm. Following a calibration period, Climate Box utilises algorithms that take local topography into account to develop a model of the frost risk for each microclimate.
Using the numerical modelling of cold air flows, the company then offers actionable products for agriculturalists, such as microclimatic maps and frost risk assessments. The data is also used to generate recommendations for siting new farms, and potential frost control measures. Founded in 2019, the company has already analysed more than 60,000 hectares of land across Europe, the US, Mexico, Australia, and Uruguay.
The Climate Box recently closed an investment round led by The Yield Lab Latam, with the participation of the Spanish agribusiness investment group Label Investments and another angel investor.
Managing food production in the face of growing climate uncertainty and changing weather patterns is vital – and getting harder. This is why Springwise has spotted a growing number of solutions. Recent innovations in this sector range from the use of vertical farming to produce more crops, to boosting yields through the use of plant hormones that reduce stress.
Mass timber’s reputation as the go-to low-carbon construction material is a problematic oversimplification that is leading to greenwashing, says carbon expert Amy Leedham in this Timber Revolution interview.
“We’re seeing a little bit of oversimplification and glorification of mass timber,” said Leedham, who is carbon lead at engineering consultancy Atelier Ten.
“The main thing that you see in the media, and one of the reasons it’s becoming such a popular building material, is that it can have a significantly lower embodied carbon than steel or concrete,” she told Dezeen. “I say ‘can’ because it’s not always the case.”
Amy Leedham (top image) is carbon expert at Atelier Ten, an engineering firm behind buildings including the mass-timber John W Olver Design Building in Massachusetts (above). Photo by Albert Vecerka/Esto
Mass timber is a term for engineered-wood products – strong structural components that typically consist of layers of wood bonded together.
It is increasing in popularity in the construction industry due to wood’s ability to sequester carbon, which means timber generally has a lower embodied carbon when compared to materials such as concrete and steel.
However, according to Leedham, this has caused mass timber to become synonymous with carbon neutrality, leading to the fallacy that all “mass-timber buildings are carbon neutral” due to the stored carbon offsetting the emissions expended by them.
“Critical factors that need to be considered”
“Mass timber construction can definitely be an important pathway toward carbon neutrality, but there are other critical factors that need to be considered,” she told Dezeen.
“If it’s not done well, mass timber buildings can have very high carbon emissions, whereas concrete buildings can have quite low carbon emissions,” she said.
“We’ve worked on concrete projects with certain concrete suppliers where they’re really focusing on reducing emissions associated with the concrete mixes and those can have quite low carbon emissions. There’s no black and white, it’s all hues of grey.”
Atelier Ten has designed the mass-timber extension of the Portland Museum of Art with Lever Architecture. Image by Darcstudio
Carbon neutrality is achieved when no additional carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere in the creation and operation of an entity, such as a building. This can either involve eliminating emissions in the first place, negating emissions through offsetting, or a combination of both.
Assuming that using mass timber achieves this through its sequestered carbon alone can overlook several factors, such as the carbon footprint of other materials used to construct wooden buildings, including the interior finishes.
“Mass timber buildings have a lot of other material in them, especially in places where the code is challenging, especially for taller mass timber,” Leedham said.
Additionally, the carbon footprint of mass timber can also be impacted by how and from where the wood was sourced and transported, and what happens to it at the end of its useful life.
If the wood used in a building’s construction ends up in a landfill, it is likely to be incinerated or left to decompose, with its sequestered carbon released back into the atmosphere – cancelling out the carbon benefits.
“We can only control up to the point that the building is built”
“Forestry practices are super important to the overall carbon impact of mass timber, as well as end-of-life treatment,” explained Leedham.
“As designers and engineers, we can only control up to the point that the building is built. We can design in certain aspects so that it can be treated well at the end of its life in 100 years, but we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The overlooking of these “critical factors” recently prompted Leedham to write a series of myth-busting essays on engineered wood, co-authored and published with US studio Lever Architecture.
The essays shine a light on the main misconceptions about mass timber that are circulating in the industry, in an effort to expose the truth behind them and promote the responsible use of the material in architecture.
“Mass timber is super important to the future of low-carbon construction,” she said.
“But it’s also really important that it’s done right. If it’s done incorrectly, then it’s just another form of greenwashing.”
Alongside the misunderstandings about mass timber and carbon neutrality, the essays also debunk beliefs that “all wood is good wood”, that it is always more sustainable than concrete, and that mass-timber buildings actually absorb carbon.
Co-author Jonathan Heppme, who is a principal at Lever Architecture, said the authors have heard these myths in discussions about their own projects, but also at industry events.
“These myths emerge very frequently”
“Variations on these myths emerge very frequently where architectural and engineering professionals meet to discuss construction and procurement with project owners, builders, manufacturers and trade representatives,” Heppme told Dezeen.
“These myths surface at symposiums, trade shows, conferences, lectures, or in conference rooms where decisions around the incorporation and advancement of mass-timber systems are being discussed,” he continued.
Both he and Leedham hope their publication will contribute to “more nuanced narratives from the mass timber industry” and advocate “healthy innovation” in this space.
In the essays, the authors outline how the industry can combat these myths – such as by encouraging architects to make conscientious sourcing decisions, which can, in turn, incentivise the timber industry to manage forests sustainably, and by improving understanding of carbon neutrality and how it can be achieved.
Leedham believes timber, steel and concrete all have roles in the future of architecture. Photo is of John W Olver Design Building in Massachusetts by Albert Vecerka/Esto
Leedham told Dezeen that these solutions could also all be supported by the roll-out of worldwide carbon taxes for construction projects, which would require payments for the greenhouse gas emissions emitted by building components.
Not only would this lead to the more responsible use of mass timber, she said, but it would also encourage more sustainable practices when it comes to using materials such as concrete and steel.
“Carbon taxes would definitely speed up the adoption of any type of more sustainable construction practice,” said Leedham.
“If you had to pay for all the carbon emissions before you got your building permit, I think that would encourage the use of mass timber, it would encourage sustainable forestry practices, and it would actually encourage both the concrete and steel industry to reduce their emissions.”
Mass timber will not “dominate the industry”
This last point is particularly important as she believes that concrete and steel will remain vital materials in the future of architecture.
“The reality is that we need everything. Mass timber is one of a kit of parts,” said Leedham.
“I don’t think mass timber is going to ever dominate the industry, just because of the sheer volume of construction that’s happening, and I don’t think it wants to.”
“We absolutely need steel and concrete industries to also focus on reducing their emissions because we’re going to need all three primary structural materials,” she added.
This echoes the views of construction material expert Benjamin Kromoser, who told Dezeen in an interview that mass timber will not become a mainstream building material because it uses too much wood
“Wood is a limited resource,” he said. “It always has to be a balance between what we take from the forest to use for building construction and how much grows again.”
Timber Revolution This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
416 Memorial Park – The purpose of the project is to design an optimal plan to create a cultural park consisting of a complex of exhibition and educational facilities and a columbarium to commemorate and share the pain of the victims of the Sewol ferry disaster. When the passenger ferry MV Sewol sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014, over three hundred people lost their lives, most of them schoolchildren. Years later, the victims’ families and survivors are still demanding justice from national authorities.
Architizer chatted with Sang Dae Lee, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, and principal at UNITEDLAB Associates, to learn more about this collaborative project.
Architizer: What inspired the initial concept for your design?
Sang Dae Lee: As the form and space of ‘416 memorial park’ embody the moment of the sinking of the Sewol ferry, there were challenges as follows.
Spatial sequence: How to spatially implement emotional tension and sequence from the entrance to the enshrinement space? As a gradual and vertical entry into space, it was attempted to represent the space of the Sewol at the time of the accident. This gradual movement into space begins from the park to the entrance to the memorial. Since these internal and external ramps are on the same slope, vertical movement is hidden and horizontality is emphasized instead. Visitors walk from the entrance through the education space on the middle level, then reach the exhibition and AV theater. While walking down the path through a narrow, closed ramp corridor, visitors will ultimately arrive in an enshrinement space with emotional tension.
This project won in the 10th Annual A+Awards! What do you believe are the standout components that made your project win?
Architecture and landscaping as a figure-ground play a significant role in place-making. The architecture will invite visitors to programs such as education, cultural activities, enshrinement space, amenities, and a shop, and the landscape will serve social events, promenades, gardens, and memorial park. The 250 birch trees commemorate the victims with a metaphor for eternity.
Over time, the trees grow bigger, depicting the meaning of death leading to new life. In addition to the indoor memorial space, a memorial event can be held outdoors in the garden and each tree provides an individual memorial space around. The walkway in the garden can be closed depending on the event and is used as a performance space and amphitheater. The interface along the walkway is a connection between the space and the architecture, receiving natural light, meaning that architecture and landscape are united.
What was the greatest design challenge you faced during the project, and how did you navigate it?
As the 416 memorial park embody the wave of the sea, there were structural challenges to support the wavy landform. If visitors walk along the promenade that crosses the waves of the roof garden, they would ultimately pass through the elevated and huge waves. The tension peaks when the pedestrian reaches the pyramid-shaped ship. By gradually increasing the level of the terrain around the enshrinement pyramid, we have space below maximized for the implementation of educational, cultural, and event programs. The upper terrain allows visitors to contemplate the surrounding park as an observatory deck and to gaze into the interior space below since the terrain is torn. A column-free structure was pursued to maximize the sense of space under this terrain. Therefore, the space is formed in accordance with the shape of the waves, and the shear walls are placed along the waves.
How did the context of your project — environmental, social or cultural — influence your design?
There are various urban cultural and commercial facilities concentrated around the project site, and as such, it has good accessibility by the public due to its large population residing around. In order to apply the meaning of ‘memorial in everyday life,’ the architecture was designed as memorial, educational, and cultural facilities, and the landscape above was designed as a park—a new typology combining a plaza with a park. The plaza hosts social and cultural events, and provides a good public space for people. A memorial park was designed along the roof garden where visitors can stroll around while looking out at the surrounding area. In particular, the memorial garden on the roof and the enshrinement space on the basement is used as a place to commemorate the victims of the Sewol ferry disaster. This is a mixed type of architecture combined with a park as a figure-ground.
What is your favorite detail in the project and why?
416 memorial park seeks to overcome the pain and sorrow, and furthermore to sublimate and regenerate it ecologically and culturally rather than a mere memorial space of sadness. The 250 birch trees planted in the garden of the memorial park will grow and form a forest over time, and the enshrinement space under the pyramid is open to the outside air allowing visitors to experience a sublime sense of season, space, and time of the disaster. The educational program provides opportunities for engagement and discussion with visitors. The AV theater and exhibition space simulates the disaster scenes and provides exhibitions and education programs tailored to the theme. The park above and the building embrace sustainability by applying new technologies and systems to symbolize the metaphor of the regeneration of the memorial space.
In what ways did you collaborate with others, and were there any team members or skills that were essential in bringing this Award winning project to life?
UNITEDLAB Associates has collaborated with Vtrilloarquitectos, an architecture firm specializing in theater in Spain. Due to physical distance and the Pandemic of COVID-19, we mutually met via zoom to discuss the main concept of what memorial park plays in the new age of time. While brainstorming, they developed great alternatives and quickly simulate the scheme into 3D models which helps for us to develop and decide the final options. They have strong technical skills and presentation skills to support our studio in leading the projects. i.e. Computer 3D simulation technics, architecture details, exhibition concept, and its AV theater technical analysis.
How do you believe this project represents you or your firm as a whole?
We try to balance practical projects and experimental ones for managing studio works. 416 Memorial Park is rather a new way of architecture well united with another discipline of landscape architecture. It was a meaningful hybrid not only in the discipline but at the same time architecturally program use inside and landscape garden above but exemplary sustainability engaged to the memorial park. Of course, it was not easy for us to critically consider diminishing the budget by designing a kind of simple or rectangular building as this project pursues a parametric form of architecture. but as always, we pursue designing a new typology by experimenting with innovation.
Design Firm: UNITEDLAB Associates / Vtrilloarquitectos, Principal in Charge: Sang Dae Lee, Architect: Valentín Trillo Martínez, Designer: Kitae Kim, Siying Chen, Client: City of Ansan, 3D Rendering: treceuve
For more on 416 Memorial Park, please visit the in-depth project page on Architizer.
Concrete, the most widely used construction material on the planet, has a serious pollution problem. Accounting for about 7% of carbon emissions per year (approximately 2.8 gigatons of CO2), if concrete were a country it would rank third behind China and the United States in terms of total emissions. Concrete, used to construct roads, bridges, homes, and monuments for centuries, needs to change to mitigate the effects of climate change. Fortunately, a variety of new, green concrete options are emerging to lower the embodied carbon of homes and buildings and help achieve global climate goals.
Concrete carbon emissions come from cement
Concrete is made of cement, water, and aggregates (such as crushed stone, sand, and gravel), as well as chemical admixtures to increase durability, workability, or resilience to environmental factors.
The cement is usually made of clay, limestone, or iron ore and serves as the main binder of concrete. Portland cement, the most common type of cement, forms by heating limestone and clay to blistering temperatures, which produces clinker—a dense, hard substance that’s then ground into a fine powder to form cement. This formation process is extremely energy intensive and requires the burning of coal, oil, and other fossil fuels. Additionally, when limestone is heated, it produces quicklime, releasing CO2 as a byproduct. Altogether, this produces the equivalent of 0.98 tons of CO2 per ton of clinker, of which 0.46 tons are attributable to fuel combustion (source: EPA 2010). That’s gigatons of carbon emissions annually!
There’s no symbol of luxury more universal than the four-poster bed. In this lookbook, we select eight bedrooms elevated by their presence.
Beds with vertical columns in each corner supporting an upper panel date back to the medieval period.
Originally built with wraparound curtains to keep out the cold and provide privacy, they have historically been associated with highly ornate designs for nobility.
Today the four-poster bed remains an unmistakable statement piece of furniture, and the list below sees the concept applied to a variety of bedroom settings, from the traditional to the contemporary.
This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring bedrooms with wood panelling, lounges with suspended fireplaces and homes with vaulted ceilings.
Photo by Adolf Bereuter
House on the Schopfacker, Switzerland, by Bernardo Bader Architects
Austrian studio Bernardo Bader Architects created this reinterpretation of the traditional Alpine chalet in the Swiss village of Trogen for an art and antique furniture collector.
In the bedroom, a grand carved four-poster bed contrasts with contemporary chrome-edged furniture, as well as the concrete ceiling and the pale larch walls and floor.
Find out more about House on the Schopfacker ›
Photo courtesy of Soho House
The Ned, UK, by Soho House and Sydell Group
The Ned is an upscale hotel formed out of a historic London bank originally designed by British architect Edwin Lutyens.
Soho House worked with New York-based Sydell Group to give the bedrooms a 1920s feel, with large, mahogany four-poster beds bearing richly patterned curtains and set among other lavish details like walnut panelling and restored chandeliers.
Find out more about The Ned ›
Photo courtesy of StudioWTA and ASH NYC
Hotel Peter and Paul, USA, by StudioWTA and ASH NYC
Crucifixes top the black four-poster beds inside the rooms of this New Orleans hotel as a nod to the building’s past as a church, rectory and convent.
New York Design firm ASH NYC continued the religious iconography with paintings of saints on the walls, while traditional furniture and furnishings give the space a sense of timelessness.
Find out more about Hotel Peter and Paul ›
Photo by Rafael Gamo
Villa Pelícanos, Mexico, by Main Office
This thatch-roof seaside villa overlooking the Pacific Ocean features a rustic four-poster bed hung with gauzy white curtains.
Part of a 1980s holiday village renovated by architecture studio Main Office, the interior marries Mexican materials with South African elements – parota wood furniture sitting among a bright, blank backdrop delivered by the white walls and smooth concrete floor.
Find out more about Villa Pelícanos ›
Photo by Nicholas Worley
The Tri-Pod, UK, by Scott Whitby Studio
Designed for a polyamorous throuple, this bespoke boudoir by London-based Scott Whitby Studio has enough space for three people to sleep together comfortably.
The architects chose to reimagine the traditional four-poster as a divider of space as well as a piece of furniture. Above the closable walnut sleeping space is a mezzanine for reading and relaxation.
Find out more about The Tri-Pod ›
Photo by Travis Williams/Travis Mark
Sackett Street townhouse, USA, by The Brooklyn Home Company
The wooden four-poster bed in the main bedroom of this Brooklyn townhouse was designed and hand-crafted by Fitzhugh Karol, a sculptor-in-residence at The Brooklyn Home Company.
It sits in the middle of a bright and airy bedroom with white oak floors, white-painted walls and an adjacent private terrace.
Find out more about this Sackett Street townhouse ›
Photo courtesy of Hunter Mabry Design
Henry Howard Hotel, USA, by Hunter Mabry Design
Another New Orleans hotel renovation, this time with a sleek black metal four-poster bed that adds a gently modern touch to the rooms.
New York studio Hunter Mabry Design juxtaposed the contemporary bed with antique furnishings and vintage brass instruments that reference the city’s jazz heritage.
Find out more about Henry Howard Hotel ›
Photo courtesy of Claesson Koivisto Rune
Xiang Jiang House, China, by Claesson Koivisto Rune
Swedish studio Claesson Koivisto Rune included a modern take on the traditional four-poster bed in this Beijing house that was designed to have a Scandinavian feel.
An oversized plinth provides room for a bedside table lamp, enhancing the sense of tranquility and cosiness in the bedroom among the extra-wide floorboards and pale-wood wall panelling.
Find out more about Xiang Jiang House ›
This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring bedrooms with wood panelling, lounges with suspended fireplaces and homes with vaulted ceilings.
Most appliances and tools use energy even when not in active use. Items that require a lot of energy to operate (e.g., dryer, dishwasher, EV charger) increase a home’s peak load, i.e., how much electricity it needs to pull from the local grid at a given moment. Running several energy-intensive or inefficient appliances at once, particularly at a time when energy costs are high (summer afternoons, for instance) can not only trigger higher bills and strain the grid, but also cause the appliances themselves to run less efficiently.
Greg Fasullo is CEO of 
