Spotted: Agriculture is directly responsible for up to 12 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, with fertilisers alone accounting for around 5 per cent of total emissions. To reduce this, a partnership between EIT InnoEnergy, RIC Energy, MAIRE, Siemens Financial Services, InVivo, and Heineken has recently launched FertigHy, a green fertiliser provider.
The agricultural sector is responsible for over 10 per cent of the European Union’s (EU’s) total greenhouse gas emissions, and European farmers apply around 10 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilisers each year. This is why the European Commission has identified the fertiliser sector as critically important to reducing CO2 emissions.
FertigHy will build low-carbon fertiliser plants that will use green hydrogen to replace the natural gas-based feedstock used in traditional fertiliser plants. The green hydrogen itself will be produced using electrolysis powered by renewable or low-carbon electricity.
The initial plant, due to start construction in 2025, will produce more than one million metric tonnes of low-carbon fertilisers per year and will be based in Spain. FertigHy also plans to build and operate a number of large-scale low-carbon fertiliser projects in other European countries.
FertigHy is coming at a time of increasing awareness of the high CO2 and energy cost of fertiliser production. In the archive, Springwise has spotted other innovations aimed at improving sustainability in this space, including the use of biochar – produced from waste – to enrich the soil and capture CO2, and increasing support for regenerative agriculture.
Spotted: As summer brings us brighter, longer days, the effects of sunlight on our energy levels and mood are undeniable. But did you know that light also affects our health? Working for prolonged periods in poor quality lighting can cause eyestrain and trigger migraines – particularly in harsh artificial lighting – as well as amplifying feelings of fatigue and anxiety.
This is an issue Barcelona-based startup Kumux has set its sights on tackling. The company creates what it calls automatic human-centric lighting solutions. This technology acts as an ‘indoor sun’, working with the body’s natural rhythms rather than against them, mimicking natural daylight patterns with artificial dynamic light.
Kumux works via a cloud-based API that can easily be integrated into any lighting control system with tunable lights. It then automatically alters light intensity and colour temperature, taking into account variables such as geolocation, date, time, and the type of activity or work occurring inside a room.
The startup, which raised €500 million in it latest funding round, offers its solutions across various sectors, including healthcare, offices, schools, and hotels. The company also claims that its system can help with reducing light-related electricity consumption by up to 20 per cent and boost productivity by 4.5 per cent.
In the archive, Springwise has spotted other solutions fostering greater indoor well-being and productivity, including a lighting panel that boosts mood while working from home, and an artificial intelligence (AI) planting system.
Spotted: Many bacteria use hydrogen from the atmosphere as an energy source in nutrient-poor environments. And now, Australian researchers have demonstrated that an enzyme, called Huc, can turn hydrogen gas into an electrical current.
The research team, led by Dr Rhys Grinter, PhD student Ashleigh Kropp, and Professor Chris Greening from the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne, Australia, isolated the Huc enzyme from a common soil bacterium, Mycobacterium smegmatis. They also found that the enzyme can generate electricity at hydrogen concentrations well below atmospheric levels — as low as 0.00005 per cent of the air we breathe.
To make their discovery, the researchers used advanced microscopy to reveal the enzyme’s structure and electrical pathways, and electrochemistry techniques to prove that the enzyme created electricity even with minimal amounts of hydrogen. Molecular modelling and simulations were also used in the research.
Additional work demonstrated that purified Huc is very stable and can be stored for long periods. In nature, the enzyme helps bacteria to survive in the most extreme environments. This means it can be frozen or heated to 80 degrees Celsius, and still retain its power to generate energy.
The energy-producing bacteria join a host of recent innovations spotted in the Springwise archive that involve microbes. These include cold-loving microbes that can digest plastic and microbes that can produce food-grade proteins.
A trio of pavilions have been installed on Copenhagen’s waterfront, showing how radical materials and new ways of living might reduce the carbon footprint of housing construction.
From 4 to 1 Planet offers three visions for the home of the future, each created by a different team of architects, engineers and researchers, in the form of a full-scale built prototype.
From 4 to 1 Planet features three proposals for the future of housing. Photo is by Itchy
One demonstrates the potential of rammed earth, a second combines a thatched exterior with a clay-block interior, and a third suggests how homes could be more space-efficient.
They were among 15 SDG Pavilions created as part of the programme for the UIA World Congress of Architects earlier this month, to explore themes relating to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Thatched Brick Pavilion was designed by Leth & Gori and Rønnow, in collaboration with CINARK. Photo is by Kim Høltermand
The three design teams were the winners of the Next Generation Architecture competition, which called for ideas into how affordable housing construction could become more eco-friendly.
The design combined a thatched exterior with a clay-block interior. Photo is by Kim Høltermand
Leth & Gori and Rønnow worked with the Center for Industrialised Architecture (CINARK), a research group at the Royal Danish Academy, on the design titled Thatched Brick Pavilion.
The design aims to show how combining these two materials can offer high levels of insulation and fire safety. Photo is by Kim Høltermand
The structure aims to show how thatch, made from straw, can be combined with porous clay blocks to create buildings with surprisingly high levels of insulation and fire safety.
“We discovered both aesthetic and technical potentials in the combination of these materials,” said Uffe Leth, a founding partner at Leth & Gori.
“If we build tall buildings with these brick blocks, the thatched facades help us with extra insulation,” he told Dezeen.
“That means we don’t need to invest energy and resources on using deeper blocks or two layers of blocks to live up to the building regulations.”
Quarter Pie Pavilion is designed by Tegnestuen Lokal. Photo is by Hampus Berndtson
Tegnestuen Lokal’s design, the Quarter Pie Pavilion, proposes how mass housing can facilitate new approaches to living, as well as new building techniques, to create homes that prioritise quality rather than quantity.
“In order for us to approach a more planetarily responsible building culture we cannot only rely on how we build, but also need to be critical about how much,” said studio founder Christopher Ketil Dehn Carlsen.
“In our opinion even the greenest building materials in the world cannot counteract our current overconsumption of space, which is why we need to make our housing market respond to both demographic changes as well as new and radical co-living alternatives,” he told Dezeen.
The design is accompanied by a list of 10 housing design principles. Photo is by Hampus Berndtson
The prototype was accompanied by a list of 10 key principles, offering a strategy that could potentially be adopted by the entire housing construction industry. Carlsen describes it as “a set of easy-to-apply rules for planetary responsible housing”.
This list advocates for homes that incorporate co-living and other forms of sharing, as well as flexibility.
The concept explores how massing housing can allow for sharing and flexibility. Photo is by Itchy
“Rather than showing one answer to our current challenges, we wanted to pose questions that could generate unforeseen and radical answers,” Carlsen said.
“Our pavilion and its overarching housing concept is just one example, in which we’ve focused on the tectonics of disassembly. But in our opinion, the ruleset itself is the real product of the initiative.”
Natural Pavilion is designed by ReVærk. Photo is by Itchy
ReVærk named its project Natural Pavilion, as it focuses on biomaterials.
One of the aims was to show how these types of materials are not just climate-friendly, but can also improve the sensory quality of a home’s interior.
The structure combines rammed earth walls with a timber structure and wood fibre insulation cassettes. Photo is by Itchy
The structure features rammed earth walls, made using locally sourced clay soil, combined with a timber structure and biogenic insulation cassettes made from wood fibre.
“Construction materials account for about 70 per cent of a building’s carbon footprint,” said Simeon Østerlund Bamford, founding partner of ReVærk.
The design looks at how these materials can improve the sensory quality of a home. Photo is by Itchy
“The answer to that has inevitably always been to look back in order to look forward,” he told Dezeen.
“We wanted to demonstrate how natural low-emission materials and old building techniques can create a new architectural experience, where the materials both provide natural indoor climate advantages as well as great aesthetic qualities.”
From 4 to 1 Planet is on show in Søren Kierkegaard’s Plads. Photo is by Itchy
From 4 to 1 Planet is the result of an initiative spearheaded by Smith Innovation, a Danish research and development consultancy, supported by Realdania and Villum Fonden.
Once the exhibition is over, the pavilions will be relocated to new locations and repurposed.
From 4 to 1 Planet is on show at Søren Kierkegaard’s Plads from 10 June to 11 August 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Eleni Myrivili is the Global Chief Heat Officer for UN Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, which facilitates more socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities. It is currently active in more than 90 countries to promote transformative change through knowledge, policy advice, technical assistance and collaboration.
In addition to her role for the UN, Eleni is a senior adviser for resiliency and sustainability to the City of Athens. She was an elected official in Athens for a number of years, pioneering work on heat adaptation before becoming Chief Heat Officer for the city in 2021, a position championed by the Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation.
We spoke to Eleni two weeks into the devastating heatwave affecting Greece and other countries around the world, and ahead of a weekend where temperatures in Athens could reach 45 C…
Interview
“It doesn’t seem to be ending and we are talking about 40 degrees, 41 degrees, 44 degrees…And I hate air conditioning, I don’t have it in my home – and I work from home.” Eleni is talking to us via video call from her home in Athens, and while the white walls and comfortable looking white sofa suggests a cool environment, her face tells a different story. “It’s just unbearable.”
In her TED talk from last year, she signs off by saying, “Cranking up the air conditioner is just not going to cut it.” Indeed, air conditioning and fans account for around 20 per cent of global electricity consumption, and contribute around 1.95 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually.
“I’m working together with the Cool Coalition led by UNEP to put together a pledge on a national level that has to do with active cooling and how can we make sure we don’t end up with thousands of air conditioning units throwing our mitigation goals out of the window,” she says.
Eleni is a passionate advocate for the need to reintroduce green spaces, planting, and areas of surface water to our urban environments, which all promote passive cooling. “Landscape architecture I think will change the world,” she laughs. It’s a moment of light relief. The conversation is taking place while wildfires continue to devastate the countryside surrounding Athens and the heat indoors is clearly debilitating.
The strategy
To try and cope, the city is implementing strategy that Eleni put in place. “There are three different pillars with actions that have to do with awareness, preparedness, and redesigning the city.”
A big part of the awareness pillar centres around categorisation of heatwaves. “It is an important thing and an initiative that we have tried in a couple of cities, but it’s something that all cities should try to do,” she says.
The categories are not set by a central body, such as the World Meteorological Organisation, rather each city categorises its own heat. “What you do is gather data from decades prior to now – temperature and other parameters such as humidity, winds, and atmospheric pressure to create the typologies that usually form the air masses that sit on top of your cities. You then check mortality rate data and see which typologies make the mortality rate peak. It allows you to create an algorithm that is very specific to your city.
“So now we are doing five or six cities in Greece – they each have their own algorithm because they all have their own relationship between heat and health. I hope the formula we use will soon be open IP – The Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation is exploring how the IP can be opened up so that different universities can use it.”
The different categories from one to three offer an estimated number of excess deaths that would be likely due to the extreme heat. Human health can be affected by heat in a number of ways, both physical and mental. In the vulnerable, it can be fatal.
As part of the preparedness pillar, categorisation allows people who work with vulnerable groups: the elderly, the very young or the homeless, to share information with them that will keep them safer in the heat, to ensure that they are being checked on, or taken to cooling centres.
It’s ultimately the third pillar, redesign, that will have a longer-term impact on how people are able to live and work in cities in a world where temperatures continue to rise. But the challenge there is a financial one. Eleni is clearly frustrated: “The budgets countries have for cities is miniscule. The maximum amount a country can get from the climate change Adaptation Fund is around $20 million and how many cities does a single country have?”
She sighs “Who knows? Maybe these crazy heat waves, now that the whole northern hemisphere is under extraordinary heat conditions… Maybe this will create the momentum we need to have something move forward fast in terms of adaption funding?”
Let’s hope so. Funding will be on the agenda at the upcoming COP28 conference in Dubai (30 Nov to 12 Dec). We will be publishing more on how cities and societies are innovating to mitigate for and adapt to extreme heat, and the role Chief Heat Officers are playing, over the coming months in the run up to COP28.
Spotted: As the global community seeks ways to scale solutions as part of the commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, experts agree that terawatts of renewable energy are needed. Scaling solar is the mission of California-based company Terabase Energy. With more than 50 terawatts of solar energy needed as quickly as possible in order to achieve world decarbonisation goals, the company recently introduced the world’s first automated field factory for solar farm production.
Terabase works as the lead construction partner for utility-scale solar plant projects, providing everything from performance modelling and terrain mapping, to in-the-field manufacturing and grid-friendly plant management technologies. The new factories, called Terafab, use robotics-assisted construction, IoT-connected (Internet of Things) sites, and round-the-clock capability.
By using a digital twin of the solar plant location, Terabase’s systems help developers make the most of limited resources. The Terabase platform can reduce the time engineers need to spend on site by up to 40 times, and its simulation ability helps plant managers track and predict voltage outputs for multiple years.
The Terafab factories greatly reduce safety risks to human workers by eliminating the need for them to lift and carry heavy panels in harsh weather conditions. The automated aspect means that the construction of a plant can run continuously, thereby reducing the overall time and cost of development.
Terabase opened its Terafab manufacturing facility – a “factory to make factories” – in Woodland, California earlier this year. The company also recently raised $25 million (around €22.3 million) to support its expansion, and has several commercial projects lined up later in the year that will use Terafab for their construction needs.
Other innovations from Springwise’s archive that showcase developments in the photovoltaics field include a fully circular and open-source solar cell design and solar-powered cooling sheds for communities without access to steady refrigeration.
Zillow created a powerful and historical shift in real estate by opening up the traditional real estate industry to the public, offering home listing information directly to consumers. A full 99% of home buyers between the ages of 23 and 56 use the internet to find their homes. This remarkable effort has unmasked previously hidden information, so that home buyers are now more educated and confident in their home buying and selling. Consumer trust has shifted from real estate agents to publicly accessible data, helping buyers and sellers better understand market trends. Specializing in the green real estate market, Realty Sage shines that light on the features and real benefits of eco-friendly homes.
While Zillow helped bring the real estate industry into the light, sustainable homes are demanding more attention. Realtors see value in promoting green home features to the public, but most well-known national real estate websites do not offer the ability to search for sustainable homes in a comprehensive way. Even though sustainable homes are almost always a better investment compared to traditionally built and equipped homes, tracking and understanding their eco features has been difficult. The data about sustainable homes is, for the most part, unavailable, inaccurate, or difficult to trust. And realtors with real green home expertise can be difficult to find.
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Bringing the Sustainable Homes Market to the Fore
Realty Sage has stepped in to fill that void in the market with a green real estate website that focuses primarily on sustainable homes. Structured differently than Zillow or Trulia, Realty Sage listings deliver innovative marketing and education that specifically focus on sustainability and new building technologies. It gives homebuyers, sellers, and real estate professionals an online shopping experience that helps them better understand the hidden value of sustainable homes.
Realty Sage listings provide detailed and educational information about eco and energy-efficient homes for sale, including renewable energy, advanced building techniques, energy rating scores, and numerous third-party certifications like Energy Star, Pearl, Passive House, and the Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Home. Listings feature verified information on cost savings and environmental impact, in addition to all the standard home listing information.
More Trust in Eco Claims for Home Listings
Energy Sage works to verify the eco claims about each home listed on the site, including energy efficiency scores and third-party certifications. The database’s Sage Score simplifies verified information on the sustainable qualities of listed homes. The score considers hundreds of features in a home and its community: renewable energy and energy efficiency; water efficiency; advanced smart home systems and appliances; interior finishes; quality construction; community and outdoor amenities; and utility costs. In conjunction, the Realty Sage Livability Categories evaluate the potential benefits of certain property features, including potential cost savings, comfort, environmental impact, and health benefits.
This helps green real estate agents and sellers more accurately market homes for a better return on the homeowners’ eco investments. And verification boosts buyers confidence in the seller’s claims. Meanwhile, industry professionals can track and understand the performance of real estate listings showcasing detailed eco features and certifications.
Connecting with Green Real Estate Agents
The right professionals can make it easier to evaluate your high-performance home at the time of sale, or when financing a new home or undertaking a sustainable renovation. Green-savvy real estate agents and other eco professionals serve every state. And Realty Sage Pros helps homeowners identify the ideal agent. To minimize spam, customers complete a short questionnaire of their real estate needs, and Realty Sage Pros will send inquiries to just three to local, knowledgeable professionals.
Realty Sage supports a culture where home buying is not just about price, location, and features. Selecting a home that delivers a positive homeowner experience includes ongoing cost savings, comfort, health, quiet, durability, functional design, future-proofing, and environmental impacts. Buying a home is one of the most important and most expensive purchases a person may ever make, so having access to the hidden attributes of a home is critical.
Realty Sage.com provides:
A platform for home buyers to search thousands of sustainable homes for sale across the country.
Searchability by type: energy and water efficiency, third-party certifications, healthy communities, smart homes, and much more
Free green real estate listings for sellers and real estate agents with advanced marketing opportunities
Hundreds of more-detailed property fields than many local multiple listing services (MLS)
Prominent promotion of sustainable features and green certifications
Information on long-term value, cost savings, and environmental impact of sustainable homes
Resources for buyer’s financing
In-depth information on sustainability and the benefits of eco features
Easy connection to local real estate professionals who are knowledgeable and experienced with sustainable homes
The next time you venture into the housing market, visit Realty Sage and then let us know how it helped you. Or connect with a local, green real estate agent via RealtySagePros for advice and guidance. And if you’re a realtor with a sustainable, high-benefit home ready to sell, be sure to post your listing for free.
The author:
Kari Klaus is the Founder and CEO of Realty Sage, a dynamic real estate platform solving one of the largest obstacles to consumer adoption of high performance and sustainably built homes: education and return on investment. Realty Sage applies intelligence to big data, simplifying eco-home features with the Sage Score and benefits with the Realty Sage Livability Categories. An award-winning tech startup, Realty Sage has been featured in The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Silicon Valley Startups Radio, Elemental.green, and more.
Spotted: The UK’s hospitality sector is responsible for around 15 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. One company tackling this issue is Skoot, a multi-faceted platform with a variety of solutions that help businesses, communities, and individuals cut their carbon footprintsm by enabling them to identify, offset, and avoid carbon emissions. The company’s Eco-Contribution tool focuses on restaurants and hospitality businesses.
With Skoot, businesses can first calculate their own net emissions. Then, the Eco-Contribution solution allows restaurants and venues to counteract the emissions generated from every meal or bill – taking into account food miles and other contributors – by planting trees. The company estimates that each tree can remove 6 kilogrammes of CO2 per diner and, over the course of its lifetime, could trap up to 1 tonne of CO2.
Not only does Skoot’s hospitality tool help to reduce an establishment’s overall carbon footprint, at no additional cost to the business, but it also empowers customers to be greener when they’re eating out. Upon receiving a bill, diners can choose to pay the optional Eco-Contribution – as set by the restaurant – and offset emissions from the meal. Depending on the restaurant’s preference, this Eco-Contribution can either be applied per table or per person.
The tool can be easily integrated across any existing till system, and to make it even easier to implement, Oracle Simphony and Micros users are able to download the Eco-Contribution app directly from the Oracle marketplace onto their POS (point of sale) system and integrate the solution remotely.
Skoot has now planted over 800,000 trees, and countered over 4,000 tonnes of CO2. The company’s aim is to expand the environmental support it offers, broaden its collection of sustainability projects, and grow operations to new countries – having already confirmed its first clients in America and South Africa.
Springwise has also spotted other innovations in the archive that help offset carbon footprints, like one platform that helps employees make tangible company-wide eco-friendly changes or another that makes it easier to track and manage carbon offsets.
In-home greywater recycling systems offer significant advantages to certain homes and businesses. However, due to the involved installation process, storage requirements, and extended payback period, distributed greywater treatment has been slow to take hold. Centralized public greywater treatment systems still involve several carbon-intensive transportation and treatment processes.
The founders of RainStick Shower have created a point-of-use (POU) water treatment technology to combat water scarcity. The first-of-its-kind, recirculating shower in North America, RainStick offers a self-contained, sustainable alternative to traditional showers that waste water by constantly sending it down the drain. Employing a closed-loop system captures, treats, and recirculates shower water, minimizing waste and maximizing efficiency.
How RainStick works
The innovative POU loop features three distinct cleaning stages to ensure the water remains suitable and safe for reuse:
A micron-level screen traps debris, such as hair and dirt, preventing them from circulating in the water.
Precisely controlled, fresh hot water is continuously introduced, maintaining the desired water temperature and pressure.
RainStick disinfects the recirculating water, using high-intensity UV LED technology. This eliminates harmful bacteria and viruses, delivering purified water.
RainStick can reduce water consumption by up to 80% compared to conventional showers, with no compromise on the quality of the shower experience. According to a study conducted by the US EPA, the average American uses 82 gallons of water per day. By adopting water-saving technologies like RainStick on a larger scale, we can collectively minimize the strain on freshwater resources and reduce the energy footprint of water use in our homes.
This article was written by Carl Elefante. Architecture 2030’s mission is to rapidly transform the built environment from a major emitter of greenhouse gases to a central source of solutions to the climate crisis. For 20 years, the nonprofit has provided leadership and designed actions toward this shift and a healthy future for all.
A year after the UN climate summit relaunch in Glasgow, many participants departed COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh searching for a silver lining. For some, the bright spot was action taken toward climate justice. Although the 2015 Paris Agreement acknowledged that circumstances in developed and developing nations differ, by establishing the Loss and Damage Fund, COP27 reconfigured the international climate action framework.
The nations primarily responsible for carbon pollution are not the most vulnerable to its life-and-death consequences. Global peace and justice demand that polluting nations (largely in the “Global North”) clean up their mess and help protect others (largely in the “Global South”) from the havoc they are causing.
While nations in the Global South earnestly turn to the Global North for financial support, there is hesitation to look to the Global North for climate solutions. Too many fail to account for regional conditions and cultures.
Sana’a’s foundation dates back over 2,500 years; the city in Yemen is filled with tower-houses built of rammed earth (pisé). | Photo by: Antti Salonen, Old Sana’a, CC BY-SA 3.0
In the building sector, the mismatch between accepted Global North solutions and the needs of the Global South is pronounced. For a century, the Global North has exported its energy-consuming glass towers and concrete roadways regardless of climate zone or social structure. Still-favored Global North models are far from problem-free today, and opportunities for appropriate regional adaptation remain largely unexplored, neglecting knowledge that could benefit both the Global North and South.
For those in “advanced” countries, it can be difficult to appreciate that less-modernized cultures have ideas and know-how that are relevant and valuable today. The oldest cities, like Damascus and Cairo, have been inhabited for at least six thousand years. Until about 1800, with the rapid proliferation of fossil-fuel-driven, resource-hungry, technology-infatuated modern-era development, cities thrived without creating a global climate crisis, ecological collapse or systemic resource exhaustion.
Consider the contrast between preferred modern-era and traditional construction materials. Today, concrete is the dominant construction material in developed countries. Concrete production accounts for eight percent (8%) of annual global greenhouse gas emissions — a number greater than the annual national emissions of Canada, Germany, South Korea and Saudi Arabia combined. Concrete does not decompose and cannot be reshaped or recycled — only down-cycled from a high-value material (structural concrete) to a lower-value material (aggregate).
Nicknamed the Manhattan of the Desert,’ Shibam is a vertical city made of sun-dried mud brick tower houses that dates back to the 16th-century (Yemen). | Photo by Dan from Brussels, Europe, Shibam (2286380141), CC BY-SA 2.0
In contrast, about one-third of the world’s population (mostly in the Global South) lives in buildings constructed with air-dried, clay-based materials like adobe and cob. The clay, sand and straw used to make them are locally sourced and decompose after use. Methods are so basic that many clay-based buildings are constructed by the people who occupy them — no global supply chain required. Incorporating wood-supported floor decks allows multi-story structures like those in the Yemeni cities of Sanaa and Shibam. Faced with lime-plaster stuccos, clay-based buildings are weather tight and durable, their heavy thermal mass beneficial in both hot and cold climates.
Some contemporary architects are taking note. Schools designed by 2022 Pritzker Laureate Diébédo Francis Kéré for his home village of Gando, Burkina Faso, are constructed by villagers from clay brick.
Yet, Kéré’s buildings are unmistakably modern. For the first school, Kéré introduced a non-traditional vaulted ceiling. The building is shaded by an overhanging sheet metal canopy on trusses fabricated from bent steel rods. With louvered wall openings, the canopy and vault produce a passive ventilation system: hot air at the canopy draws cooler air through openings in the ceiling vault and louvered windows below.
Gando Primary School Extension uses vaulted ceilings to increase the school’s thermal comfort by allowing hot air to escape upwards through integrated ventilation gap. |GandoIT, Kéré Primary School Extension Gando, CC BY-SA 3.0
To better engage diverse cultural and heritage perspectives in UN climate and sustainable development activities, a coalition of cultural organizations formed the Climate Heritage Network (CHN) in 2019. CHN was launched following the publication of The Future of Our Pasts: Engaging Climate Heritage in Climate Action. Prepared by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), The Future of Our Pasts provides a detailed roadmap for integrating cultural and heritage considerations into the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Compelling scientific evidence about the risk of climate change was first highlighted by the UN at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Carbon polluters in the Global North have not needed better science to act but greater resolve. Their inability to make sufficient progress for more than three decades has changed the international landscape. The Loss and Damage Fund adopted at COP27 acknowledges the responsibility of developed nations to act decisively and rapidly on behalf of all people.
Culture and heritage advocates such as CHN believe it must also begin a period of profound awakening in the Global North. Ideas that brought progress in the modern era have ossified into biases that are inhibiting the fresh thinking necessary to overcome the climate emergency. For those of us in the building sector, words written by Jane Jacobs ring loud and clear: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” Her wisdom is most urgently needed for global climate solutions.
Carl Elefante, FAIA, FAPT, is a Senior Fellow with Architecture 2030 and Principal Emeritus with Quinn Evans Architects. Known for coining the phrase: “The greenest building is one that is already built,” Elefante writes and lectures nationally on historic preservation and sustainable design topics. Carl serves on the International Steering Committee of the Climate Heritage Network. In 2018, Carl served as the 94th President of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He is a Fellow of the AIA and the Association for Preservation Technology (APT).
