Series 2 — Regenerative Buildings

In Building for the Future Series 1, we outlined the impact of the built environment on the earth and climate. A major cause of this impact are the building methods and materials used in construction practices around the world today. Therefore, we must take a look at the materials – such as cement, steel, and glass – which make up the majority of our building stock today.

Each of these materials are associated with a certain amount of embodied carbon which is emitted during the production phase. For example, the production of cement, which makes up 10-15 per cent of the concrete mixes used in construction, is so carbon intensive that if the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of CO₂ worldwide! In addition to carbon emissions, our built environment is responsible for a great deal of the world's resource consumption: 50 per cent of the world's waste is generated in the built environment. This causes severe damage to natural ecosystems through air, water, and land pollution.

At the same time, the built environment is rapidly expanding. There is a growing need for construction as the world’s population is expected to reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050. Consequently, the global building stock is projected to double over the next few decades, with a new city of one million people being built every five days. An enormous amount of materials and resources, such as energy and land, will be needed to house and service this growing population. This demand is grown even further by an increase in the amount of space per person and resource-intensive urban sprawl in many part of the world (see image "Development of average flat size, people per household, and floor space per person in Germany" below).

As the climate crisis deepens and mineral-based materials become scarce, it is vital to rethink the materials we use to build and maintain our cities as well as alternative approach to construction.

There are multiple intervention points at which the emissions associated with building can be reduced, avoided, or reversed. By thinking along the entire lifecycles and supply chains of materials, we can be strategic about the resource extraction, manufacturing, use, and disposal of building materials (see image "Technical and biological cycle" above).

Strategies for mitigating emissions and waste include using bio-based and renewable materials, keeping materials in use for as long as possible, minimizing the extraction of new resources, and ensuring that resources are wasted as little as possible. Ultimately, we need to strike a balance between meeting human needs and at the same time respecting our planetary boundaries, while curbing the increasing demand for materials, land, and energy.

The second series of Building for the Future, “Regenerative Buildings”, focuses on the practical details of building with regenerative materials. The first publication, "Building with Bio-Based Materials", focuses on the use of regrowing organic matter in construction. The most well-known of these materials is timber, but the series also delves into less-known and widely available resources such as hemp, straw, and bamboo, including both their advantages and the barriers to their adoption so far. KP2 "Building with Reused and Recycled Materials" explores the impact of the circular economy on the construction sector and the immense potential of circular building practices. Finally, KP3 "Less is More – Building Sufficiently" questions whether we need to build so much in the first place. It introduces the idea of sufficiency as a guiding principle for architects and planners.

Take a sneak peek into the second series or download the available Knowledge Products below.