01/09/2019

Where Are The Architects Who Will Put The Environment First?

The Guardian - 

Should we stop building airports? Return to mud and thatch? The climate crisis is an opportunity for creative thinking, but the values of architecture need a radical overhaul
Ilford community market in east London, opening next year, will have no concrete foundations and a timber structure stabilised by rocks in metal cages. Photograph: Interrobang Architecture and Engineering
Nearly 40% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, to use a figure architects love to bandy, are caused by the built environment. Or a bit more, depending on the definitions used.
It’s an arresting figure. It suggests that the design of buildings and the planning of cities can do much to counter climate crisis.
Architects like to think of themselves as public-spirited, well-intentioned people. The profession tends to attract people who want to change the world for the better. And what could matter more than the prevention of environmental and societal collapse? It makes squabbles about architectural style or form seem trivial by comparison.
So what would architecture look like – more importantly, what would it be – if all involved really and truly put climate at the centre of their concerns? Would there be no more concrete, given the material has been fingered as particularly destructive? Or an end to towers clad in panels that have to be replaced every 30 years? Or much less building altogether?
It is a question raised earlier this year by the launch of Architects Declare, in which 17 winners of the Stirling prize proclaimed a set of principles by which they and – they hoped – others would from now on work, and by the debate that followed.
How serious could these architects really be, went one of the reactions, given that a number of them are designing major airports? A more radical version of the question will be put by the young curators of the Oslo Architecture Triennale, Maria Smith, Phin Harper and Cecilie Sachs Olsen, which opens later this month. “Just fiddling around with what the market gives us is not enough,” says Harper.
What is considered sustainable differs wildly depending on who you ask.
The World Green Building Council, an organisation supported by members from the construction industry, holds up the seemingly surprising example of Barangaroo, a huge high-rise development on the Sydney waterfront. Harper and Smith cite traditional earth-building techniques and ingenious experiments in building structures without cement or steel.
Somewhere in between is a building like the Stirling prize-shortlisted Cork House in Eton, about which nobody has a bad word to say.
The Stirling prize-shortlisted Cork House in Eton. Photograph: Ricky Jones
The argument of Architects Declare – which might be called the sensible middle ground – goes something like this: architects (and for that matter contractors, clients, engineers and everyone else involved in making buildings) have no excuse for not giving their utmost to make their work have as little impact on the environment as possible. They have to consider everything – how far stone might have to travel from quarry to site, for example, and whether or not a building’s components will end up as landfill when it is demolished.
It is not enough to reduce what are called the “in-use” costs – heating, ventilation, lighting, water, waste, maintenance – but also the “embodied energy” that goes into construction and demolition: quarrying cement, smelting steel, firing bricks, shipping materials to site, putting them in place, taking them down again and disposing of them.
Until recently the construction industry has concentrated on in-use costs. The British building regulations, for example, set reasonably high standards for the performance of buildings, but are silent on embodied energy. This makes no sense – there’s little point building something that performs magnificently in use, if it takes decades or centuries to pay back the expenditure of energy that went into its construction.
Painful choices may be required – giving up some dearly beloved brutalist-style concrete or a favourite brick. It might mean some genuinely difficult dilemmas: concrete, if used right, slows the rates at which a building cools down and warms up (good) but is made with cement, a material that singlehandedly accounts for about 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions (not good).
It should be possible to make a humble kitchen extension using materials dug up from the ground around it
Sustainable design shouldn’t be seen as just a technical fix, a matter of paying the right consultant enough money to make sure the building ticks enough boxes, or of buying the most magical available piece of cooling technology. It should rather be integrated into the art of architecture.
The ideal is that it should help buildings be all round better, longer-lasting, more pleasurable, more beautiful – “generosity, quality of materials, what people want – it kind of makes them endure” is how Alison Brooks, one of the Architects Declare signatories puts it. It could mean more natural stone, more timber. This is why the Cork House appeals – its material is lovely stuff, which also happens to be renewable, recyclable and highly insulating.
Slightly more radically, the architectural profession needs to reconsider its value systems, what is considered good and what bad. Architects are still trained from studenthood to perform in what Steve Tompkins, one of the driving forces behind Architects Declare, calls a “competitive and individualistic profession”. They get more glory for designing a singular new building than they would if they worked out a good way of insulating old houses.
Yet, as most of the building stock of the future is already with us, and as demolition and rebuilding entails the chucking away of whatever went into making the original building, the latter is likely to be more useful than the former.
All of which, if every architect pursued it with full commitment, would be a significant advance. This collection of good principles, however, doesn’t answer the airport question, which highlights the limits on architects’ powers: it is not up to them to decide how much air travel there is in the world, which leaves them with the choice of refusing the commission to design airport buildings, or helping them to be as “green” as they possibly can be.
Grimshaw Architects, Foster and Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, signatories of Architects Declare, have opted for the latter. They are working on terminals in Heathrow, Mexico City and Beijing, respectively.
For Jeremy Till, head of Central Saint Martins school of art and design, these architects’ choice is a “farce.” “You can’t have a carbon-neutral airport,” he says. Architects have to do more than be well-intentioned instruments of what he calls “an extractive industry.” They have to be activists as well as designers.
Maria Smith and Phin Harper believe drastic times call for drastic actions. If, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last autumn, there were only 12 years left to limit climate change catastrophe (make that 11, as nearly a year has passed since then), the conventional processes of architecture are too slow to make any difference.
By the time a well-considered, carefully calculated development has successfully traded off the inputs and outputs that went into its construction, it will be too late. Rather the whole attitude to construction has to change now. Which also requires the economic system behind it – that is to say, capitalism – to change.
Their Triennale in Oslo, a series of displays and performances starting on 26 September, will apply to architecture the economic and political idea of degrowth – the beliefs that an alternative has to be found to the continuously rising GDPs that are fundamental to capitalist economies.
For Smith and Harper it is about using resources that already exist and, rather than serving “utilitarian goals of investment and profit”, concentrating on “what really makes life worth living”. “All the ingredients for a good life exist somewhere in the world,” they say – it’s just a question of enabling everyone to have access to them.
Hy-Fi, a temporary tower outside MoMA PS1, New York, made of mushroom mycelium. Photograph: Living New York
For architecture this might mean learning from indigenous building techniques based on using renewable materials close at hand, such as mud walls or thatch, enhanced with modern technology. Smith and Harper give as examples machines for making bricks out of mud, wall panels made of hemp and lime, materials made from compressed recycled denim or from ground-up pine needles mixed with pine resin. There is a technique for building columns by filling heavy duty fabric with sand or rubble. There is mycelium, a form of fungus that can be made into bricks.
A practical example of this thinking is the Ilford community market, a project by Smith’s practice, Interrobang, which is due to open next year. Here there will be no concrete foundations, but a timber structure stabilised by rocks in metal cages that can be demounted and reassembled with minimal waste or impact.
It should also be possible to make a humble kitchen extension, argue Smith and Harper, using materials dug up from the ground around it, “rather than importing steel reinforcement from China”. It would only require a different idea of what a kitchen extension should look like.
There are a few gaps in the thinking articulated by Smith and Harper. If action on climate is urgent, we probably can’t wait for the entire economic and social basis of the modern construction industry to change first. It’s also not obvious how some of the experimental techniques they mention can be developed at speed and realised at sufficient scale to make a meaningful impact.
They themselves don’t pretend to have all the answers. But then, it’s also clear that more moderate members of the profession don’t have all the answers, either. What is clear is that everyone involved in the design and making of buildings has to do everything they can to mitigate their effect on climate. Which, if we’re really lucky, will also lead to better architecture.

Material change: reinventing how we build
Barangaroo, Sydney Harbour.
Barangaroo, Sydney
A large-scale commercial development that tries to modify conventional processes rather than replace them; for example, by reducing the amount of cement in concrete, or using water from an adjoining bay to help cool the towers of homes and offices. Its approach has won awards.

Sandbag columns
The Canadian architectural practice YYYY-MM-DD are developing what might be called super sandbags: structural columns made by containing sand or rubble in the type of heavy-duty fabric used for shipping construction materials. In principle, it means you could build using whatever is available on a building site, but it’s still at a speculative stage.

Radical recycling
Ma-tt-er, a London-based “materials research design studio”, are pushing the possibilities of natural and recycled materials – plaster made from mussel shells, floors made from seaweed, denim from old jeans compressed into a load-bearing material.
 Mussel shell plaster. Photograph: Ma-tt-er 
Mycelium
The fungal substance that gives mushrooms their structure is now touted as both an organic substitute for plastic and a vegetarian substitute for beef. Architects are exploring its possibilities too, most conspicuously with temporary towers built outside MoMA’s PS1 gallery in New York.

Engineered timber
The processing of wood such that it’s strong enough to build multistorey buildings is proof that experimental techniques can become mainstream. Engineered timber is now frequently used as an alternative to concrete, at large scales.
The only snag, as the engineer Mark Skelly points out, is that there isn’t enough sustainably sourced timber in the world to make all buildings out of it. The simplest way to build green is not to build at all: existing building stock is a vast store of carbon and of resources that are lost when a building is demolished.
Re-use is usually seen as less glamorous than building new, but it’s a good use of architects skills to find ways to adapt rather than replace.

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We Have The Blueprint For Liveable, Low-Carbon Cities. We Just Need To Use It

The Conversation - 

Increasing heat in Sydney and other Australian cities highlights the urgent need to apply our knowledge of how to create liveable low-carbon cities. Taras Vyshnya/Shutterstock
Over the past seven years more than 100 research projects at the Co-operative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living, in collaboration with industry across Australia, have pondered a very big question: How do we build future cities that are sustainable, liveable and affordable?
This is exactly what Australians want, as the recent Greater Sydney Commission report, The Pulse of Greater Sydney, revealed. People want cities in which they live close to jobs and have reasonable commuting times. They want access to parks and green space, and relief from ever-increasing urban heat.
The good news is we already know what it will take to deliver on much of this wish list. Since 2012, I have headed the A$100 million Low Carbon Living CRC, which has brought together Australian businesses, industries, communities and many of our brightest researchers to work out how to steer change.
Our Cooling Sydney Strategy, for instance, is the result of years of research into how to combat urban heatwaves. The burden of this heat is unevenly spread across our cities.
For example, residents of Sydney’s western suburbs are exposed to many more days hotter than 35 degrees than Sydneysiders living in the CBD and the city’s north. Last summer that meant over a month’s worth of intense heat in the suburb of Penrith, including nine days in a row above 35°C.
While the recent winter sun might feel welcome, the negative impacts of increasingly hot cities on our health, lifestyle and energy use greatly outweigh any winter comfort.

So what are the solutions?
Our researchers have already found how we can offset increasing heat. The strategies includes cool and permeable pavements, water features and evaporative cooling, shade structures, vertical gardens, street trees and other plants – even special heat refuge stations.
Keeping cool inside, without huge power bills, is possible too. During last summer’s heatwave, our pilot 10-star energy-efficient house in Perth remained a comfortable 24°C inside, without air conditioning, when it was over 40°C outside. The exceptional thermal performance of the house was down to its evidence-based design.

Josh Byrne explains how his house keeps temperatures comfortable year-round with low energy use and no net emissions.

This work is just one part of our wider remit. Our UNSW-based centre is on track to deliver independently verified cuts of 10 megatonnes of carbon emissions generated by Australia’s built environment by 2020. By integrating renewable energy systems, smart technologies, low-carbon materials and people-centred design into buildings and urban precincts, we have developed a sustainable, liveable and affordable urban blueprint for Australia. A PwC study (yet to be released) estimated cumulative economic benefits totalling A$684 million by 2027.
To put this another way, we have identified and verified evidence-based pathways to cut emissions equivalent to taking some 2.1 million cars off the road.
Some of the progress to date is not immediately obvious to the casual observer. Take an otherwise unremarkable stretch of road along the back way to Sydney Airport. Recently, a 30-metre section of concrete was installed, which looks more like an ad hoc road repair than an important scientific pilot study.
Bu 15 metres is paved with a new geopolymer concrete that slashes greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. The other 15 metres is conventional concrete, the most widely used man-made material on the planet. Concrete production, using cement as its binder, accounts for about 8% of all global emissions.
The geopolymer concrete developed through our research centre is a similarly high-performance product but its binder safely incorporates otherwise noxious industrial waste streams, such as fly ash from coal-fired power stations and slag from blast furnaces. Australia has stockpiled about 400 million tonnes of waste from coal-fired power generation and steelmaking.
In Alexandria, in collaboration with the City of Sydney, we are testing this low-carbon concrete as a road surface that could help clean up industrial waste while slashing emissions. Working with NSW Ports, we’ve also shaped it into low-carbon bollards to form a breakwater to protect the coastline at Port Kembla from extreme weather.

Waste from coal-fired power stations has been used to make low-carbon bollards to protect the coastline at Port Kembla.

We now have the know-how to do better
There are many such success stories, but with 150 CRC Low Carbon Living projects the list is too long to detail. What’s more important, as our funding period comes to an end and Australia loses its only innovation hub committed to lowering carbon in the built environment, is to note how we got to where we are today.
The federal government’s Co-operative Research Centre program fosters co-operation and collaboration on a grand scale. Industries, businesses, government organisations and communities with a stake in solving big, complex challenges partner with researchers from a wide range of academic fields. This structure brings together sectors and people whose paths might otherwise rarely cross.
The cross-fertilisation of ideas, expertise and skills delivers innovative solutions. Research worldwide has consistently shown that collaboration drives innovation, and that innovation drives economic growth. Our experience confirms that as we partnered with organisations such as Multiplex, AECOM, BlueScope Steel, Sydney Water, ISCA, CSIRO and the United Nations Environment Program.
Cities are complex, exciting beasts, but we have the knowledge and expertise to live better, more comfortable urban lives in Australia while reducing demand for energy, water and materials. That is, we have the blueprint for low-carbon urban living. We must now choose to use it.

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Great Barrier Reef Outlook Now 'Very Poor', Australian Government Review Says

The Guardian -  |

Five-yearly report says climate change is escalating the threat and window of opportunity for action is now
The outlook for the health of the Great Barrier Reef is now ‘very poor’, a major Australian government review has said. Photograph: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The outlook for the Great Barrier Reef has deteriorated from poor to very poor according to an exhaustive government report that warns the window of opportunity to improve the natural wonder’s future “is now”.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s outlook report, published every five years, finds coral reefs have declined to a very poor condition and there is widespread habitat loss and degradation affecting fish, turtles and seabirds.
It warns the plight of the reef will not improve unless there is urgent national and global action to address the climate crisis, which it described as its greatest threat.
The report says rising sea temperatures and extreme events linked to climate change, such as the marine heatwaves that caused mass coral bleaching in the northern two-thirds of the reef in 2016 and 2017, are the most immediate risks.
Other major threats include farming pollution, coastal development and human use, such as illegal fishing. The report says water quality is improving too slowly and continues to affect many inshore areas, largely due to farming practices that had not improved rapidly enough.
“Without additional local, national and global action on the greatest threats, the overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef’s ecosystem will remain very poor, with continuing consequences for its heritage values also,” the report says.
“The window of opportunity to improve the reef’s long-term future is now.”
The authority’s chief executive, Josh Thomas, said the reef was widely recognised as one of the best managed marine protected areas in the world and its world heritage values remained intact, but it was at a critical point in its history.
“While the reef is already experiencing the impacts of climate change, its future is one we can change – and are committed to changing,” he said.
The report maps the health of the reef, which it says has declined from what was described as a crossroads in 2009 to “under pressure” in 2014 to being a “changed and less resilient reef” in 2019.
It says not all areas of the reef have been equally affected and the challenge to restore the reef is big, but not insurmountable. It would require action to effectively address the climate crisis and effective implementation of the government’s 2050 reef plan.
The environment minister, Sussan Ley, said the reef had been hit over the past five years by two mass coral bleachings, several cyclones, an ongoing crown-of-thorns starfish outbreak and the impacts of climate change. She said the “very poor” outlook was something “we can change and are committed to changing”.
Other key findings of the report include that: seagrass meadows are in poor condition; some species populations are being substantially affected by habitat loss and degradation; the size of the reef is becoming a less effective buffer to widespread and cumulative impacts; reef-dependent economies need to prepare for the impacts of a less diverse ecosystem caused by rising ocean temperatures.
The outlook report was one of two major reports published about the reef on Friday. A separate report card on the condition of inshore reefs released by the federal and state governments rated their condition in 2017-18 as a “D”, largely due to poor water quality driven by land management practices including farming.
The reports come amid a campaign by farmers in Queensland against state government plans to tighten regulations on agricultural run-off that flows into reef catchments. Information in the report will form part of the evidence considered by the Unesco world heritage committee when it examines the reef’s health and status next year.
Australia successfully campaigned in 2015 for the reef’s world heritage listing not to be considered in danger. The Guardian reported this week that the government was pushing Unesco to resolve how it would deal with climate impacts on world heritage properties, including the Great Barrier Reef.
Richard Leck, from WWF-Australia, said the outlook report was a sombre reminder of the challenges facing the reef. He said solutions were available and must be included in a revamped Reef 2050 plan due from the federal and state governments next year.
He said the plan must take climate change seriously and Queensland needed to pass regulations to reduce farm runoff.
“The science is irrefutable. The time for delay is over,” he said.
Jon Brodie, a professorial fellow at James Cook University in Townsville, said the report showed that, while there were some small areas of progress, Australia was failing the reef.
“Overall, there is very little good to report whatsoever,” he said.

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Australia's Carbon Emissions Continue To Rise Despite Government Assurances About Climate Change Policy

ABC News - Claudia Long

Emissions Reductions Minister Angus Taylor said the increase is due to growth in LNG exports. (Supplied: GRACosway)
Key points
  • Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said the increase is due to growth in LNG exports
  • The report shows a drop in emissions from electricity and agriculture have been offset by increases from transport and waste
  • Labor says the Coalition should not solely blame LNG exports for the increase
New figures show Australia's carbon emissions are continuing to climb despite Federal Government assurances it has the policy framework to address climate change.In the year to March, emissions rose 0.6 per cent on the previous year, according to data released by Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor
There was, however, a drop in greenhouse gas emissions of 0.4 per cent recorded in the March quarter of this year.
The Opposition and environment groups have seized on the data and accused the Government of failing to respond to a changing climate.
Mr Taylor rejected that and insisted the increase in emissions is due to growth in the LNG industry.
"In the last year there is a 0.6 per cent increase but it was more than accounted for by the very strong growth in LNG exports that are reducing global emissions," Mr Taylor said.
"We're seeing a reduction in emissions as a result of Australia's gas exports, but we have to wear a small increase as a result of that.
"While that is not great for carbon accounting it is a good outcome for the world."
Labor and environmental groups have rejected Angus Taylor's claims about climate change action. (ABC News: Jake Evans)
The increase of around 3.1 million tonnes resulted in a total of 538.9 million tonnes of carbon emissions over the year to March 2019.
The report also showed a continued drop in emissions from the electricity and agriculture sectors have been offset by increases in emissions from transport, waste and other sectors.
Explained: The Paris Agreement
You have no doubt been hearing a lot about the Paris Agreement and know that it pertains to climate change, but what is it actually all about?
Despite the overall increase, Mr Taylor echoed the Prime Minister's previous comments that Australia would meet its Paris Agreement obligations "in a canter".
"We've laid out to the last tonne how we're going to reach those Paris commitments," he said.
"No government 12 years ahead of a target has laid out to the last tonne how they're going to achieve those obligations."
Head of research for the Climate Council Martin Rice disputed that claim, telling the ABC the results weren't good enough, despite the quarterly drop.
"The emissions figures clearly show the Federal Government is failing to act," Dr Rice said.
"Even the Government's own data confirms we are not on track to meet our woefully inadequate emissions reduction target.
"The emissions data today is another example of reckless reporting from the Federal Government.
"They cherrypick the data, they don't look at the big pictures."

Is Tony Abbott 2.0 really
 the strong climate policy we need?
Policymakers need to realise the climate will respond to our emissions, not our accounting, writes environment reporter Nick Kilvert.
Labor's climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the Coalition should not solely blame LNG exports for the increase.
"The report shows that year-on-year emissions are rising in every sector of the economy except for two," he said.
"One of them is electricity because of the renewable energy target and some state renewable energy policies that Angus Taylor has opposed vociferously.
"And the other sector of the economy that's seen emissions go down is agriculture, unfortunately because of the impact of the drought.
"Every other sector of the economy, not just LNG, sees emissions rising and has seen emissions rising ever since this Government was elected."

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