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It is inevitable. At some point in the school year, a student in my AP Literature class will ask the dreaded question: what is “Modernism?” Usually, this happens in the afternoon before a full moon…

I try to keep it general. In literature and the visual arts — the representational arts, let’s say — modernism was an attempt to find new forms of artistic expression to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world where old certainties and trust in institutions were falling away. Often, this meant disrupting verisimilitude and drawing attention to the constructed-ness of the art object. As the caption of Magritte’s iconic painting declares, Ceci n’est pas une pipe! A painting of a pipe is not a pipe; it’s a painting.

Even though modern art seems “weird” to casual museum-goers, there was a method to the madness. Modern artists rejected representational conventions in pursuit of honest expression. Counterintuitive as it might seem, they wanted to bring art closer to life. This meant breaking the spell of illusion that had defined Western art since the Renaissance.

What kind of truth, though, does modern art speak to? Many kinds, to be sure, but I think they can be separated into two main buckets. (Or coffins to stick with the horror theme). On the one hand, you have the analytic tradition represented by Cubism, which, especially in its early years, involved a deconstruction of the picture frame. What you see in a Cubist painting is the underlying architecture of the composition. As with Brutalist architecture, the key gesture of Cubist art is to lay bare the object’s structure and not smooth it over with surface details.

A print by German Expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner titled “River Bank at Elisabeth, Berlin” (1912). The jagged lines and collapsed perspective anticipate the visual style of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920). National Gallery of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

On the other hand, there is Expressionism. Influenced by psychoanalysis, Expressionists sought to represent the irrational elements of subjective experience. Artists like Edvard Munch and Ernst Kirchner created wildly distorted landscapes, portraits, and urban street scenes that were charged with emotion. Many of these artists were especially interested in capturing the alienation and loneliness of urban life.

So how does architecture fit in? It is perhaps not surprising that the analytic vein of modernism was more readily applicable to the design of buildings than Expressionism was. In architecture, the word “modernism” is today synonymous with the rationalist utopianism of Gropius, Mies, and figures like this. However, this is not the whole story…

Modern architecture as we know it had an evil twin — one that died in childhood, but still haunts us today. In the 1920s, there was such a thing as Expressionist architecture. It never really flourished — that is, not until much later when it was picked up by contemporary architects like Daniel Liebskind — but it existed in Germany, the Netherlands, and a few other areas in Northern Europe. Distortion, fragmentation, and the expression of strong emotion were the key features of this type of architecture. Like the rationalist modernism we know and love, Expressionist architecture rejected tradition, but it did not do so in a Platonic pursuit of harmony. No — this architecture was not bound by anything but the architect’s imagination.

Let’s take an example. In Dornach, Switzerland, one can visit The Goetheanum, which is the headquarters of the anthroposophy movement. Anthroposophy is a form of mysticism, or more precisely, gnosticism. Its adherents believe that, through certain meditative techniques, people can gain direct knowledge of the spiritual world. Rudolf Steiner founded the movement in the early 20th century. Steiner also designed the headquarters, a flowing, bat-like structure made entirely of cast concrete.

The building still appears radical today, in an era when we are used to seeing sculptural architecture. But think about how it must have appeared to the citizens of Dornach when it was erected in 1928. Many of the design decisions, such as the chimney stack that seems to have been hastily molded out of clay by a gigantic hand, would have been totally incomprehensible to people used to architecture that followed programmatic conventions. The uneven windows still bother me when I look at them long enough.

Here’s another good example: the Het Schip apartment complex in the Spaarndammerbuurt neighborhood of the Netherlands. The name means “The Ship” and I guess it looks sort of like a ship. Sure. This was designed by architect Michel de Klerk and erected in 1919.

With its brick façade and tiled roof, at first blush this building doesn’t seem totally out of place with its context in Amsterdam. However, the proportions are bizarre — unsettlingly so, as if the building was designed by an alien who had read a description of Dutch architecture but had never actually seen it. Inside, the situation is even stranger. Looking up from inside the tower, one finds a riot of intersecting wooden support beams. There seems to be no regularity, symmetry, or even method to the arrangement of the beams. There isn’t even that sort of irregular fractal harmony one finds in the work of Antoni Gaudi. It just feels wrong, albeit in an interesting and stimulating way.

The madness of Het Schip is more apparent on the interior. Here is the view inside the central tower. Arjandb, Rijksmonument 3961 Huizenblok Het Schip Amsterdam 23, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL

As stand alone objects, Expressionist buildings from the 1920s are really cool. One should not interpret my description of their weirdness as a dismissal of the structures in themselves. Every city needs discussion pieces, and expressive, sculptural architecture helps give definition to otherwise homogeneous urban environments. In our century we call this the “Bilbao Effect.”

Nevertheless, in the 1920s, the emergence of Expressionist architecture must have troubled some onlookers. Was this what the future would look like? Would built environments be just as disorderly and mercurial as the human mind? What would it even feel like to live — not just in an Expressionist building — but in an Expressionist city?

These questions seem to have been taken up by the art direction team of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the 1920 German silent film that Roger Ebert once called “the first true horror movie.”

Lobby card of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” showing the twisted and distorted architectural forms of the set design. Goldwyn, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the most studied and discussed films of all time. The film tells the story of a power-hungry hypnotist who manipulates a sleepwalker into committing a series of murders. The screenwriters, Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, were pacifists, like many Germans at that time. Janowitz had served as an officer in World War One, where he witnessed the nihilistic chaos and destruction of that conflict up close. The screenwriters both claimed that the film was intended as an allegory for the way authority was wielded during the Great War, with the older generation coercing the young to kill and die on their behalf.

In his landmark 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler, film theorist Siegfried Kracauer argues that the film is more complex than even its screenwriters understood. It does not just put forward a critique of irrational authority; it also shows how, in the 1920s, the German people craved this type of authority on a subconscious level. Kracauer points to the twist ending of the film, which the studio forced the screenwriters to add against their will. In the end, it turns out that Dr. Caligari was not actually a mad hypnotist, but rather the director of a mental hospital. The hypnotism and the murders never happened. They were simply a fantasy concocted by one of the inmates.

A conceptual preliminary sketch of the set design by Walter Röhrig. 1919. Note the fragmentary windows and staircase. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

At some level, Kracauer argues, this inmate wanted to be hypnotized and ordered around by an external authority. This type of control would liberate him from the burden of his freedom. Kracauer believes this type of sentiment was widely shared among the German people in the confusing and chaotic postwar period. He argues that cinema has a special ability to reflect collective sentiments, as it is a collaborative medium with no sole author. By looking at German cinema from the 1920s until the rise of Hitler, Kracauer claims, one can observe the dreams, fears, and aspirations of a population that was in the process of rejecting democracy and embracing violent totalitarianism.

Kracauer’s reading of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which emphasizes the unconscious forces at work in the narrative, is most powerfully expressed in the film’s radical set design, which was deeply influenced by the work of Expressionist painters such as Kirchner. Ebert described the world of the film as “a jagged landscape of sharp angles and tilted walls and windows, staircases climbing crazy diagonals, trees with spiky leaves, grass that looks like knives.” Black paint was used to create disorienting shadows in both the exterior and interior scenes. The proportions of everyday objects, like chairs, tables, and windows, are radically at odds with what one would expect. To use a German word, they are unheimlich: familiar yet strange and somehow sinister.

Model of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) film set: Alan’s Living room during the scene of the murder. Reconstruction by set designer Hermann Warm. Note the exaggerated height of the back of the chair. For some reason, this has always been a creepy detail for me. Displayed at the Museum of Film and Television Berlin, Deutsche Kinemathek, SunOfErat, Filmmuseum Berlin – Caligari Model, CC BY-SA 4.0

In short, the built environment of the film represents the world of the psyche. In here, it is hard to orient oneself, and there might always be killers lurking in the shadowy corners. As in a Kirchner painting, there is powerful honesty in the film’s lack of realism. But one thing must be acknowledged: this is not a city anyone would want to live in. Perhaps our inner lives are stormy and chaotic — we are, after all, creatures of desire and habit. But this does not mean our houses, apartments, and city streets need to express this aspect of ourselves. If anything, they should be designed to nudge us out of the darkness and into the light.

Image: Still from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. CC BY-NC-SA via Norwegian Digital Learning Arena.

Reference

Sustainable News

Could this app change your habits to cut carbon?

By Zarkon Group,10/02/2024

Spotted: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2022 mitigation of climate change report estimated that changes to individual “lifestyles and behaviour” could reduce global carbon emissions by 40 to 70 per cent by 2050. Helping to make that a reality is the One Small Step behaviour change app.

One Small Step uses proven psychology to support and encourage individual behaviour shifts that, when added together with thousands of others, equate to significant reductions in carbon emissions. The app helps users track their expenditures, travel, food choices, energy use, and waste production. And for every friend that a user helps to sign up, One Small Step also plants a tree.

After establishing a baseline for their behaviour, the app lets users track how different choices impact carbon emissions and receive personalised suggestions for ways to make their habits more eco-friendly. As users record shifts in behaviour and buying habits, the app also provides vetted alternatives for some of the most commonly used products.

The company’s goal is to work with 100,000 users of the app to prevent one million tonnes of carbon pollution from entering the atmosphere, as a first step in harnessing the power of community action. The company also challenges users to try to reduce their carbon footprint to two tonnes of CO2 per year, which is the UN’s 2050 goal for individuals. With the average American having a carbon footprint of over 14 tonnes, any reduction in that figure, when multiplied by millions of others doing the same, adds up to a substantial climate impact. Currently available in the USA and Australia, the company plans to expand access to the app to other countries.

There’s certainly work to be done by heavy-polluting industries to cut their emissions, but individuals also have the power to contribute to positive environmental changes. Springwise has spotted a countertop appliance that lets you compost easily in your kitchen and a platform that helps individual employees make their company more sustainable.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Sustainable News

Understanding environmental change through AI-powered pollen analysis

By Zarkon Group,29/09/2023

Spotted: When we think of global warming, the itchy eyes of allergy season are unlikely to be the first thing that springs to mind. But, experts highlight that worsening climate change means longer pollen seasons – and more runny noses for hay fever sufferers.

Historically speaking, researchers have analysed pollen in the air manually, which is a highly laborious task. Now, to monitor the growing rates of pollen and better understand environmental change, scientists from the University of Exeter and Swansea University are turning to cutting-edge technologies –including imaging flow cytometry and deep learning artificial intelligence (AI) to create a system that’s able to spot and categorise different pollens much more quickly.

As researcher Dr Ann Power highlights, “Pollen is an important environmental indicator, and piecing together the jigsaw of different pollen types in the atmosphere, both today and in the past, can help us build up a picture of biodiversity and climate change.”

As well as helping us to better understand our changing environment and shifting biodiversity levels, the AI-powered system could also help those with severe pollen allergies better manage their symptoms. Understanding when certain types of pollen are most prevalent, such as the grass pollens that so many are allergic to, would help to improve pollen forecasting so that individuals can limit exposure or take medications accordingly.

Accurately keeping track of biodiversity and climate change is the first step in ensuring that we are moving in the right direction for environmental protection. In the archive, Springwise has also spotted the use of AI and sensors to monitor farms and assessment software to forecast climate change risk.

Written By: Matilda Cox

Reference

Because it can be cast into any shape, concrete opened up new possibilities for architects.

Architecture

Architects Should Continue Using Concrete. Change My Mind.

By Zarkon Group,14/09/2023

“What’s nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished.”
– Zaha Hadid

Before embarking on my argument, I want to get something out of the way: I believe that climate change is real. I also believe that mitigating climate change by lowering carbon emissions in as many areas of human life as possible is an urgent necessity in our century. Doing so is the only way to preserve the chance that future generations will be able to enjoy a decent and dignified existence.

Another point to add in the preamble: I agree that concrete is an enormous contributor to climate change. It would be silly to try to deny it. The facts are there for anyone who cares to look.

According to the Princeton Student Climate Initiative, the manufacture of concrete produces 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, about 8% of global emissions. By comparison, transportation accounts for 29% of global emissions. The reason concrete is so carbon-heavy has to do with the manufacture of cement, the binding agent that, when mixed with water and gravel or sand, creates concrete – that magical liquid stone that enabled the creation of modern cities and remains the most consumed product on Earth after water. (Food is not even in spitting distance).

To create cement, limestone, clay and other materials are fired in massive kilns at over 1,200 degrees fahrenheit. And again, this is done a lot, all over the world, as concrete is used in almost every aspect of construction worldwide, from roads to sidewalks to bridges to pipes and more. Even most wood frame buildings have concrete foundations. As the architect Sarah Nichols put it, concrete is in “almost everything” and can be found “almost everywhere” in the modern world.

In a brilliant 2022 essay for Noema, author Joe Zadeh explains that “such a monstrous scale of production has monstrous consequences.” He adds that “concrete has been like a nuclear bomb in man’s conquest of nature: redirecting great rivers (often away from the communities that had come to rely on them), reducing quarried mountains to mere hills, and contributing to biodiversity loss and mass flooding by effectively sealing large swathes of land in an impermeable gray crust.”

It is no wonder that some writers have advocated abandoning concrete altogether, arguing that new techniques of engineering wood and other materials obviate the need for all this gray sludge. Right here in Architizer, Francesca Mercurio asserted bluntly that “architects should stop using concrete.” She writes that “we should be striving toward a mindset shift, one where humans understand their place on Earth and respect their ecosystems and natural terrains. We must shift our priority from grandeur and excess to preserving the Earth’s natural resources and ultimately, close the chapter on the concrete era.”

Because it can be cast into any shape, concrete opened up new possibilities for architects, essentially enabling the development of modern architecture as we understand it. Via Phaidon and Architizer.

However, even Mercurio admits that “there is certainly no clear path” to abandoning concrete altogether, as there are no real substitutes that are as cheap and versatile to meet the needs of a world that is still in the process of urbanizing. And here is my worry.

At times, the broadsides against concrete seem to be attacks on modernity itself, a claim that the time has come to scale back and learn to live with less. It is often linked to a call to repair existing infrastructure instead of always building more. But that is not an option for the developing world, where necessary infrastructure is still being constructed and the process of industrialization and economic growth is lifting millions out of poverty. When people say that “concrete built the modern world,” it almost seems to imply that the modern world has already been built, which is far from the case. Politically, economically, physically, and morally, humanity remains involved in a period of growth and transformation.

As a democratic socialist, I am not happy with where we are. I do not want to stop building and go back to nature, as doing so would require an enormous amount of sacrifice on the part of the world’s most vulnerable people. A sustainable future is key, but it must be a high-tech future, one that is able to provide for the needs of a global population that continues to grow. To do this, we are going to need to move mountains — literally. Certainly, innovations toward a greener concrete should be commended, as should building practices that allow architects to use less concrete. In this vein, Philippe Block’s research into how architects can use vaulting to limit the amount of concrete used even in high rise structures is particularly fascinating. But until a real alternative to concrete presents itself, we are very much still in the “concrete era.”

Cover image: RW Concrete Church by NAMELESS Architecture, Seoul, South Korea

Reference

Sustainable News

Using fairy tales to teach about climate change

By Zarkon Group,16/06/2023

Spotted: Climate change may appear simple on the surface, but it is a rather complicated topic to teach. And schools could be doing a better job. Data collected by UNESCO from 100 countries shows that only 53 per cent of the world’s national education curricula reference climate change, and 40 per cent included only a minimal level of content. To help individuals better understand the climate crisis, a team led by Lancaster University – which also included researchers from the Universities of Strathclyde and Manchester – has focused on developing accessible and memorable ways of communicating sustainability-related topics – using fairy tales.

Fairy tales are not only for children, and the team is using them to respond to the various challenges of climate change, including electricity generation, low-carbon transport, and plastic pollution. The team has presented three “telling tales” on these topics, using the characters of mermaids, vampires, and witches as metaphors to communicate the typically complicated arguments more engagingly.

The mermaids, or sirens, highlight the potentially dangerous allure of renewable energy sources in the UK, which can cause us to ignore wider issues like excessive energy consumption. Vampires serve as embodiments for cars, sucking the wellbeing out of the environment and communities, while the witches are a metaphor for the broader ‘witch hunt’ against plastics, which puts a narrow focus on the material itself, rather than spotlighting the unsustainable and ineffective systems that can make plastic so harmful. The team worked with illustrator Véronique Heijnsbroek to create corresponding images for the stories.

The team hopes this concept will inspire the science community to communicate energy-based social science research in more digestible formats to engage with those outside of academia. This August, the team is planning to conduct a virtual workshop with other researchers and illustrators to further develop and broaden their collection of characters.

Climate education is essential, and Springwise has spotted many innovations in the archive helping to make the topic more teachable. These include wooden blocks that teach children about energy and using Minecraft to demonstrate the impact of climate change.

Written By: Anam Alam

Reference

Sustainable News

Five climate solutions making a change for the better

By Zarkon Group,17/05/2023

We live in an age of mass production and mass consumption – never before have so many products and services been so readily available to us. And at the same time, leaps and bounds in the transport industry over the past 100 years have made journeys quicker and easier than previously thought possible, allowing us to cross oceans in mere hours without lifting a finger. But all of these advancements come at a cost.

The modern era was largely built on fossil fuels, with our cars, homes, and production methods all emitting vast volumes of greenhouse gases. And these gases have been detrimental to our climate – since the 1880s, the Earth’s temperature has risen 0.08 degrees Celsius per decade, and this rate of warming has more than doubled to 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade since 1981. With this rising temperature comes an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including drought, floods, hurricanes, and tsunamis, particularly in developing countries.

In 2021, the famous naturalist David Attenborough called climate change “the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced”. If global warming isn’t stopped or drastically slowed, the results will be catastrophic. Such a huge challenge, naturally, does not have a simple answer, but collaboration across multiple industries to cut greenhouse gas emissions and prevent further pollution will allow us to get global warming under control. Slowing climate change is possible, but we will need to get creative.

Innovators across all industries are exploring ways we can all cut carbon and effectively tackle the climate crisis, as well as developing technologies to help build resilience in the face of changing climate and more extreme weather.

There are many exciting solutions fighting climate change that will be featured at ChangeNOW in Paris between 25^th and 27^th May. Take a look at five of the best.

One global survey in 2015 revealed that over a third of all adults had never even heard of climate change. The researchers emphasised that basic education and public understanding of climate issues are vital to garner support for climate action. Awareness has grown since the survey, but 2021 UNESCO data from 100 countries still showed that only 53 per cent of the world’s national education curricula refer to climate change, and even when it is mentioned, it is not made a priority. This is where Climate Pitch comes in. The company delivers public sessions or workshops and conferences for a specific business to help build public knowledge of climate change. The sessions combine visual presentations with clear explanations and exercises to help audiences quickly understand the issues, and motivate them to engage on a personal, professional, and collective level. Read more

As is set out in the European Green Deal, Europe aims to be the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Central to achieving this ambition is encouraging the energy transition, and the European Union (EU) is well on its way – renewable energy sources made up 37.5 per cent of gross electricity consumption in 2021. But in order to make renewables the primary, if not only, energy source in Europe and beyond, we need to continue development of technologies that use reliable and consistent green energy sources. Doing just that is startup Minesto, which has created a ‘kite’ with a turbine that ‘flies’ underwater to generate electricity from predictable tidal streams and ocean currents. The device is attached to vessel with a tether, and a control system onboard autonomously steers the kite in figure-of-eight motions. This movement pulls the turbine through the water at a water flow much higher than the actual stream speed – and this faster speed generates extra power. Read more

Around the world, the loss of crops caused by untreatable pest damage or plant disease is estimated to be between 20 and 40 per cent. And at the same time, increasing extreme weather is putting additional pressure on growers. With the global population continuing to rise, the agricultural industry needs to find effective and sustainable ways of building resilience. One way of doing this is taking advantage of technology. Data science company Fermata has created an artificial-intelligence-powered (AI) solution, called Croptimus, that helps growers spot disease early and track plant changes over time. With the technology, farmers can cut labour costs and reduce pesticide usage by 25 per cent. Read more

One study conducted by Oxfam in 2021 that analysed the investments of 125 of the world’s wealthiest billionaires discovered that up to 70 per cent of their emissions come from investments in polluting industries, resulting in an average of 3 million tonnes of carbon emissions every year. As much as we may be trying to fight climate change with daily actions, there needs to be a drastic change in where the world’s money is going and what it is funding. Enter Goodvest, a fintech that makes sure your savings are not going towards harmful sectors, such as the production and extraction of fossil fuels, armaments, tobacco. Goodvest analyses the entire carbon footprint of a user’s investments in order to limit the global warming trajectory of funds, helping individuals invest responsibly without contributing to climate change. Read more

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that a staggering 931 million tonnes of food are thrown away in households, retail, and the food service industry every year. Not only does this mean resources are wasted with the growing of this food, but when it’s not disposed of properly and ends up in landfill, food products break down and release methane, which is detrimental for climate change. To help reduce the volume of food being thrown away unnecessarily, Ryp Labs developed StixFresh. Once placed on produce, these food-grade stickers make items last up to twice as long, reducing the chances of food getting thrown away due to spoilage. Read more

Springwise is a proud partner of ChangeNOW, which takes place in Paris 25-27 May 2023. As the world’s largest event for the planet, the three-day international summit brings together entrepreneurs, business leaders, and policymakers to accelerate change. Tickets are available now and Springwise readers can get a discount of 20% by using the code: SPRINGWISECN23

Words: Matilda Cox

Reference

Sustainable News

Biodiversity-boosting solutions making a change in 2023

By Zarkon Group,15/03/2023

The Earth is home to multiple delicately balanced and interconnected ecosystems, with every creature on the planet being reliant on countless other organisms to clean the air and water, regulate the climate, and provide nutrition. In fact, 75 per cent of human crop production relies, at least in part, on pollinators such as bees.

Even the smallest change within an ecological community can have devastating consequences. Good biodiversity is the best indicator of a healthy and resilient ecosystem, so preserving it is essential. Exemplifying this commitment to biological diversity was last year’s COP15, which concluded with a landmark United Nations agreement – the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF) – that pledges to protect at least 30 per cent of the planet’s land, sea, and coastal areas by 2030.

It is more important than ever to act and protect biodiversity all over the world, with innovation being central to long-lasting, impactful change. Five exciting new solutions that could help make the GBF’s goals a reality will be on display at the ChangeNOW 2023 summit.

Photo source Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

A PLATFORM PROMOTING SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY

From 2010 to 2020, the Earth lost around 4.7 million hectares of forests every year. It is estimated, as well, that up to 50 per cent of all logging in the world’s most threatened forests is connected to illegal and unsustainable timber trade. Of course, wood remains an essential construction material, but in order to protect our forests and the diverse array of habitats they provide, we need to support sustainable timber farming.

In comes EcoTree. Customers, whether they be individuals or companies, can buy a single tree or forest from EcoTree’s treeShop and track its growth through the online platform. Then, when a tree is ready to be cut for sustainable timber, the profit is returned to the customer. As well as forestry, customers can also get involved in any of EcoTree’s five biodiversity projects, including one restoring wetlands and another that boosts honey bee populations. Read more.

Photo source Valentina Fischer on Unsplash

USING BEES AS ENVIRONMENTAL DRONES

As human activity and the resulting changes in our climate threaten crucial biodiversity across marine and terrestrial environments, it is becoming increasingly pressing to step in – before these ecosystems are altered forever. But one key obstacle is that it can be difficult to protect an environment effectively without first understanding it properly.

BeeOdiversity uses bees as living drones to gather essential information about a given space. During their normal pollination activities, the bees collect billions of environmental samples. These are then analysed to identify, source, and assess the level of pollutants and measure plant biodiversity in a given area. The system can be used to assess the quality of a site or the impact of an activity. Armed with the data, organisations can then take proper improvement measures. Read more.

AI-POWERED DATA FOR NATURE-BASED CARBON PROJECTS

Overall, forests account for approximately 26 per cent of total land area across the globe. This may seem like a sizeable proportion, but the world has lost a third of its forests since the last ice age. This mass deforestation is devastating for the planet’s ecosystems, as wildlife habitats are destroyed and previous sources of vegetation and shelter disappear.

As well as being crucial for biodiversity, forests are also essential for capturing carbon and balancing our climate. Afforestation and reforestation projects are essential, but it can be difficult for those wanting to get involved to track these programmes. With Kanop‘s AI-powered automated platform, forest managers can easily access and track complex forest projects, even down to an individual tree. Kanop provides accurate, up-to-date information, regardless of the size of a project. Read more.

Photo source Francisco Jesús Navarro Hernández on Unsplash

PRESERVING MARINE LIFE ACROSS AFRICA

As well as being beautiful in and of themselves, coral reefs are essential for life on Earth, protecting coastlines and supporting 25 per cent of all marine ecosystems. They are, however, under threat. Rising ocean levels are increasing coastal erosion that, in turn, decreases water quality and increases sedimentation, eventually smothering the coral. And though African sea levels are rising faster than the global average, coral restoration projects in the continent are few and far between.

Koraï hopes to change this by restoring African coastal ecosystems. Through Koraï, companies can offset their emissions by purchasing carbon credits in the form of mangrove and seagrass nurseries, which act as powerful carbon sinks. Customers can also tailor-make their own coral reef plan, track its impact, and even visit Koraï’s nurseries to get involved with impact projects directly. Read more.

TRANSPARENT CARBON CREDITS THAT EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND

As we inch ever closer to the 1.5°C limit on global warming, more and more businesses are recognising the urgency of large-scale decarbonisation. One easy way corporations can do this is through the purchase of carbon credits, which allows them to offset external carbon capture and reforestation projects against their own emissions. However, the lack of transparency and regulatory requirements within carbon markets is often a cause for concern.

Startup Reforestum aims to address this lack of trust and transparency with an artificial-intelligence-driven (AI) platform that helps individuals and organisations know exactly where their offset funding is going. For businesses, Reforestum has recently introduced two new products – the ‘VCM Navigator’, which provides market intelligence and other information to see and understand VCMs, and the ‘Portfolio Manager’, a tool that helps companies more easily manage their offsetting projects in line with best practices. Read more.

Words: Matilda Cox

Reference

Sustainable News

Tackling climate change with forest fungal networks

By Zarkon Group,28/02/2023

Spotted: Much of the focus on the use of nature to capture carbon has remained above ground – on forests and trees. But ecologist and climate scientist Dr Colin Averill argues that the role of an “entire galaxy” below our feet has been ignored. Soils are made up of millions of species of bacteria and fungi and this microbial biodiversity is essential to healthy plant growth – and efficient carbon capture.

Dr Averill’s team in the Crowther Lab at ETH Zürich has spent years documenting fungi’s impact on tree growth, finding that restoration of underground fungal communities can significantly accelerate plant growth and carbon capture. To develop this concept further, Dr Averill founded Funga, a startup that plans to restore fungal biodiversity to accelerate carbon sequestration in forests.

Funga will use DNA sequencing and artificial intelligence (AI) to generate profiles for a healthy fungal microbiome in around 1,000 different forests. This will help it identify the right combination of wild fungi in each location to achieve accelerated tree growth and the highest amount of carbon sequestration. Funga will also establish around 1,000 hectares (about 2,500 acres) of forest and soil fungal communities – creating an ‘ideal’ environment for carbon removal.

Funga has recently closed a $4 million (around €3.8 million) seed funding round and is working with forest landowners and the foresters to make fungal microbiome restoration a reality.

A growing number of researchers and innovators are focusing on the role of microbes, and especially fungi, in cutting carbon emissions and moderating climate change. Springwise has spotted the use of fungi as a meat replacement, and the application of biome science to create heat-resistant coral.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

Sustainable News

“Architects need to embrace radical change to avoid a hellish future”

By Zarkon Group,23/11/2022

As yet another COP fails to put the world on a path to avert climate catastrophe, it’s time for architects to fundamentally rethink the work they do, writes Michael Pawlyn.

The outcome of COP27, and Antonio Guterres’ grim warning that “we are on a highway to climate hell”, requires us as designers to do some serious thinking about what we do next. Aside from the breakthrough on “loss and damage” payments to the countries most affected (generally the poorest and least responsible for the problem) there was virtually no progress in getting the world on-track for a safe future. It would be easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge, but the more courageous thing to do is to engage in an urgent debate about how change happens – and then to take radical action accordingly.

It may also be tempting to think that we can carry on broadly as normal and try a bit harder at sustainability, but that would be a disastrous course of action. We need to accept that the degree of change required is far greater than the industry has embraced to date.

There was virtually no progress in getting the world on-track for a safe future

We urgently need to transcend conventional sustainability approaches to pursue regenerative solutions that are net-positive rather than simply mitigating negatives. We need to move from mechanistic approaches towards more systemic approaches and to widen our perspectives from being solely human-focussed to recognising the whole web of life on which we depend. In short: architects need to embrace radical change if we are to avoid the hellish future predicted by Guterres.

Change needs to occur at the level of mindsets. This has been the focus for Architects Declare UK, in the way the declaration points were written, the events we have organised and the practice guide that was produced. The source of inspiration has been the systems thinker Donella Meadows, who asserted that the best way to change a system is by intervening at the level of the mindset, or paradigm that drives the system, and by shifting its goals.

If we ask ourselves “what drives the way architects work?” it’s probably fair to say that it’s a mixture of worthy aims, such as transforming the built environment to enhance people’s lives, as well as less comfortable motivations, such as the glory gained from publicity or completing a project. Younger, and future, generations are likely to judge harshly those who are motivated by the latter and some of the big-name architects who would like to think of themselves as avant-garde are at risk of being on the wrong side of history.

If, as many have argued over the years, architecture is a celebration of the age in which it was created, then a good test of its relevance is to consider how a contemporary work will be considered in, say, 20 years. Buildings that are little more than gimmicky manipulations of form that help a developer make more money, or extravagant showpieces paid for by luxury brands are likely to be regarded by future generations as some of the most trivial and morally detached artifacts ever created.

Big-name architects who like to think of themselves as avant-garde are at risk of being on the wrong side of history

Societal norms like democracy and human rights are coming under increasing threat and it is worth contemplating how an informed teenager would regard architects who seem content to be photographed with genocidal leaders or those who design projects for murderous autocrats. If we want to be “Good Ancestors”, to use Roman Krznaric‘s term (in turn, borrowed from Louis Kahn’s client Jonas Salk), we need to think much more consciously about how we spend our limited lifespans and how we will be remembered over longer timescales.

An urge to create monuments or icons has been a significant driver for (mainly male) architects and that now needs to be challenged. Ever since the first skyscrapers, we have fetishised supertall buildings and continually competed to go ever taller. A growing body of evidence is showing that this is an extremely profligate way of building; both in terms of embodied and operational carbon.

Surely, in a planetary emergency we should be competing to design buildings that are best aligned with long-term planetary health? Earlier this year Architects Declare UK wrote an open letter to the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats (CTBUH) in which we proposed that it was time to transform its register of “The World’s Tallest Building”. We called on the CTBUH to shift its focus from a fixation on height to the other part of its mission: Urban Habitats. As an organisation they have done a lot to promote sustainability and now there is an opportunity for them to engage with regenerative thinking.

As a profession, we risk being left behind by other sectors that are embracing change more rapidly. Many large businesses are now accepting that the pursuit of profit is not a sufficiently inspiring purpose to attract the best staff and are defining bold new purposes. Similarly, many institutions are recognising that their original purposes are in need of updating. The 1828 Royal Charter for the Institute of Civil Engineers declared that civil engineering “is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man”.

We risk being left behind by other sectors that are embracing change more rapidly

Architects Declare UK has written to the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Simon Allford, proposing that its mission statement should be updated to align with the planetary emergency. Whether he chooses to make this part of his legacy remains to be seen.

It is encouraging to see that some awards such as the Pritzker Architecture Prize are moving with the times, choosing to celebrate architects who champion retrofit, those who work with low-energy materials and, recognising a more diverse range of architects than was conventionally the case. There are, however, plenty of awards systems that still reward highly damaging approaches, as Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) have argued in connection with the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Ideally, this mindset change would be shared by governments. After two years of requesting, and being refused, a meeting with the UK prime minister or former energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng (during which time it was revealed that ministers from his department held hundreds of meetings with fossil fuel companies), Architects Declare UK recently met with shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband and engaged in a constructive dialogue about systems change.

There are, of course, limits to our agency as architects and designers, but it’s no longer acceptable to claim that our existing limits are the end of the story. Where change is necessary, and exceeds what’s possible for an individual company, we need to collaborate to drive systems change. This means joining groups like Architects Declare, Design Declares, Architects Climate Action Network – wherever you feel most at home – and working together to drive change.

Michael Pawlyn is founder of Exploration Architecture. He is the co-author, with Sarah Ichioka, of Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency published by Triarchy Press, and the co-host of the Flourish Systems Change podcast. He is a co-initiator and Steering Group member of UK Architects Declare.

The top image is by Verstappen Photography via Unsplash.

Reference

Architecture

Architects Should Stop Using Concrete. Change My Mind.

By Zarkon Group,14/07/2022

How can architecture be a force for good in our ever-changing world? During Future Fest, we’ll pose this question to some of the world’s best architects. Launching in September, our three-week-long virtual event will be 100% free to attend. Register here!

Concrete is one of the most widely used substances on Earth, it has been around for centuries and makes up most of our modern-day and past world. It is used to build our roads, our buildings and the many historic monuments we cherish today. Humankind relies on concrete for everything: to build our hospitals, transportation systems and schools. We have greatly benefitted from this material and it is thanks to its relatively straightforward manufacturing process that makes it easy to use on a global scale.

When we think back, some of the most important historic monuments still stand thanks to concrete. Take the Colosseum for example, or Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, such architectural wonders are owing to concrete.

The Colosseum metro exit, Rome, Italy, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Concrete has played a pronounced role in architectural movements like Brutalism and Futurism and its aesthetic properties have been contested and debated time and time again. When and where concrete was first used is often debated and it typically depends on how one defines the term “concrete.” Although its origins are contested, it is clear that ancient civilizations have combined limestone with water and sand for a very long time. This historic mixing of limestone, water and aggregates can be seen as a precursor to the modern-day cement-making practices we use today.

In 2022, we live in a world dominated by concrete.The Romans were known to use concrete similarly to the way we do today. This ancient civilization built everything with concrete – bathhouses, harbors and important religious structures like the Pantheon. What’s significant about these ancient Roman structures is their ability to have lasted centuries. The lifecycle of modern-day concrete is roughly 100 years, however, there was something about the Roman structures that stood the test of time. Many believe the longevity seen in the structures built by the Romans is thanks to the use of volcanic ash, otherwise known as pozzolana.

Today, concrete is made by blending Portland cement with water and then mixing the paste with aggregates — typically sand, gravel and crushed stone — which hardens and binds into an incredibly durable substance. Portland cement is a limestone powder developed in the late 19th century and is hugely popular in today’s cement-making industry. Concrete’s unyielding nature mixed with its relatively straightforward construction process has helped it land its name as the most used substance on Earth (after water, of course).

The Pantheon dome, Rome, Italy, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

We are living through the age of concrete, and the time has come for this epoch to draw to a close. The world’s most beloved material is, simply put, detrimental to our planet.

Concrete has kept us sheltered and secure for a long time. Safe from the elements, inside our concrete fortresses unaware of what’s happening outside. We have reached a time in history where concrete is competing — and winning — against the Earth’s fauna. Concrete accounts for around 4-8% of the world’s CO2 emissions and most of that is produced during the manufacturing stage. The concrete industry has tried to divert attention toward the material’s positive capability of capturing CO2, but studies have proven that concrete absorbs a mere 17% of emissions produced, and that’s over its lifecycle of 100 years.

However, it’s not just CO2 emissions that worry scientists: the cement-making process accounts for one 10th of the world’s industrial water consumption. An equally worrying issue is concrete’s impact on natural resources. The cement-making process is draining many natural infrastructures that humans rely upon. For example, the acquisition of sand to make concrete is destroying many of the world’s beaches. The glorified concrete jungle is covering the productive land we rely upon for our very existence.

Unité d’Habitation by Le Corbusier, Marseille, France, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The craze for concrete, excess and grandeur is seen all over the world and is especially pronounced in China. Statistically speaking, China has poured more concrete into its land every three years than the United States has in the past hundred years. Not only is this significant in terms of environmental impact, but it is a costly endeavor for governments to replace and dispose of old concrete.

What can possibly be the solution to replacing the world’s most used substance? There is certainly no clear path to doing so, but there are ways to start. Architects, builders, manufacturers and consumers all carry a responsibility when it comes to making conscious choices that will impact our planet. Rethinking the production process, using alternative materials and conserving existing concrete structures are starting points. Finding alternative construction practices, such as timber-framed buildings, is important areas to explore. However, it is crucial not to replace one ecological issue with another.

The situation is complex, political and far from resolved. Demanding architects, who have been taught to rely upon concrete, to avoid the material altogether will take time. However, we need to start somewhere. We should be striving toward a mindset shift, one where humans understand their place on Earth and respect their ecosystems and natural terrains. We must shift our priority from grandeur and excess to preserving the Earth’s natural resources and ultimately, close the chapter on the concrete era.

Reference

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