That is what building out of wood and natural materials essentially is: Carbon, water and sunlight.
Bruce King has written a new book, coming out in the fall, called The New Carbon Architecture, with the subhead Building Out of Sky. By this he means building out of materials that come from the sky– carbon from the CO2 in the air, sunlight and water – which, through the process of photosynthesis, are turned into plants that we can turn into building materials.
Treehugger has promoted wood construction because of the way it sequesters carbon, but Bruce King takes it much further. Where I have been excited about buildings that actually measure their embodied energy and carbon and pay off the debt over the life of the building, we’re talking here about starting at zero carbon or net positive on day one. I am really looking forward to reading this book.
Picking up on the story in Green Energy Times, Ace McArleton notes that we don’t have time for payback calculations or offsets anymore. But we have choices and alternatives:
Ace McArleton (I love that name) explains how the natural materials we can use now, from straw to hempcrete to timber to cellulose, are as good or better than synthetics, and how they now fit into green building practice:
Many will argue that this isn’t really true, that straw doesn’t have the R value of foam, that they are not as fire resistant, that they are not as durable. It is certainly not as cheap and fast as conventional material choices. But there is a bigger picture that we have to keep in mind:
It also becomes evident that we have to change the way we plan and design our cities so that they take advantage of these materials, by learning from the cities that were built that way. Because as important as it is how we build, what we build has even more impact. Back to Bruce King, from his book’s introduction:
Had I been the author of Bruce King’s book, I might have titled it Building out of Sunshine, because that is really the source of energy that is driving this process, and should eventually drive everything from our lights and devices to our transportation.
This is how it all rolls into a bigger picture – how we have to build zero carbon buildings and get to them with zero carbon transportation, which really means designing our cities so that we can get around by walking, followed by bikes, followed by public transport. It’s all encompassing, about trying to live a carbon-positive lifestyle. We have to do this, and our buildings are probably the easiest place to start.
