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One way to consider the climate crisis is to scan the horizon: Every building, road, power line and subway station has played a part. Our built environment contributes nearly 15 gigatons (around 40 percent) of global carbon emissions per year and is responsible for a similar portion of energy use. And with a growing population, the demand for raw materials is expected to double by 2060.
“It’s certainly a crisis for us as an industry,” says Susan Jayne Thams Carruth, a Danish architect and behavioural designer who is delivering a keynote speech at this year’s Human/Nature conference. The two-day event held by Azure magazine is convening architects, researchers and innovators to explore potential solutions and discuss best practices in a warming world.
As tasks go, meeting the targets set by the Paris Agreement is as ambitious as it is necessary, and will require the global construction industry to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. “We are part of the problem,” says Carruth. “We’ve got to be part of the solution.”
Here are five important strategies shaping a greener future for architecture and design.
Forecasts for “unusually” high temperatures are becoming paradoxically routine. According to a global study released in May, over the previous 12 months there were 26 days of “excess extreme heat” that were the result of human-induced climate change. In our cities, the compounding effects of the built environment make for a growing threat to human health, particularly among vulnerable populations. Globally, extreme heat is now the leading cause of weather-related deaths; between 2000 and 2021, the heat-related death rate for people over 65 increased by 85 per cent. Illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and asthma increase a person’s risk of dying during a heat wave, as does the absence of a basic life-saving device: air conditioning.
Where urban design, park planning and building heights have long been governed by a preference to keep humans exposed to the sunlight as much as possible, the new priorities are a little more, well, shady. Trees, screens and roof overhangs are now being reconsidered for the respite they can bring: a temperature reduction of up to 35 percent.“We are just trying to extend the number of hours that we can be comfortable,” Dorsa Jalalian, an urban designer at the Toronto firm Dialog, recently told Landscape Architecture Magazine.
To that end, Paris has created a network of 800 “cool islands” — green spaces, air-conditioned public areas and fountains — to provide a break from intense heat. And where tall buildings have been the subject of strict regulations governing their heights, angles and mass, some are now looking at the benefits of their long shadows. Some cooling techniques are distinctly old-school: breeze and trees. In Frankfurt, planners are optimizing wind flow through the city to provide natural cooling. And around the world, cities are expanding their tree canopy for the express purpose of providing more shade and lowering temperatures. The City of Toronto is planning to plant 120,000 trees a year to bring its canopy coverage from 30 percent currently to 40 percent by 2050. In Glasgow, the focus is on creating biodiverse, flood-resistant, tennis court–sized native woodlands dubbed “wee forests.”
Speakers, including Dorsa Jalalian, will explore solutions to promote urban heat resilience at Forecast for Hotter Cities, Thursday, October 24, 1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
Toronto is now one of the world’s most expensive cities for housing — deemed “impossibly unaffordable” according to a recent study — thanks to rising prices, the high premium on borrowing, fierce competition and wages that aren’t keeping up with real-life costs. But while we need more homes — particularly more affordable ones — we also need to consider the environmental impact of all that construction.
Efforts to make construction more sustainable are at the core of a new MaRS initiative to support building-tech startups and help promote their green solutions. Mission from MaRS: Better Buildings aims to speed up adoption of innovative solutions that will rein in carbon emissions. With a coalition of stakeholders, the program will guide six venture participants in scaling their decarbonizing potential and will be working with a coalition of stakeholders on potential pilot programs.
Scaling greener housing is the focus of several new City of Toronto projects as well. “Housing and climate are the same problem,” says David MacMillan, a manager in the Environment and Climate Division. “There are solutions that can address both. One way to do that is prefabricated solutions.”
Call it the IKEA approach — assembly required. “Instead of a concrete building cast in place, we’re talking about pieces of wood or other materials that are put on a truck in their component parts and assembled on site,” he says. “Things fit together like a Lego set.”
That’s the idea behind a 100-unit rental complex at Dundas and Ossington that’s in pre-development. “With mid-rise mass timber, you can deliver the scale and still build fast enough to really move the needle on housing needs,” says MacMillan. The project’s other green benefits include a geo-exchange system for heating and cooling, a green roof and bike parking.
“Sustainability doesn’t have to be more expensive,” says MacMillan. “What’s important is that you’re always pushing to that next step because that drives new business models and solutions.”
David MacMillan and other panelists will discuss Scaling up Delivery of Sustainable, Affordable Housing, Thursday, October 24, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Architects and building managers are zeroing in on ways to optimize day-to-day operations to reduce the energy required for heating, cooling and electricity, save on water — and also create a nicer place to live and work. Manitoba Hydro Place in Winnipeg shows what’s possible even in a climate where temperatures can oscillate from -30° Celsius to 30° Celsius. The Platinum-LEED-certified tower uses 70 percent less energy than an equivalent building of conventional design thanks to passive systems such as thermo-slab heating and cooling, supported by geothermal exchangers. But a lot of the innovations would be familiar to anyone designing buildings in, say, the 17th century: indoor gardens, natural light and windows that open.
And because the building improved the experience of being at work, employee sick days have been “drastically reduced,” says Tomasso Bitossi, an associate partner at Transsolar KlimaEngineering, the firm contracted to design the project. “We work as much as possible with passive design — so natural ventilation, exterior shading. If the windows can open, we’ll also use ceiling fans,” he says. “Innovation can mean many things.”
For Bitossi, innovation also looks like reminding people what it’s like to live in buildings that are not kept within a two-degree range year-round. At International Square, a 1960s building in Washington, D.C., Transsolar was commissioned to reimagine the atrium as a high-end food court.
“We said, ‘why don’t you change the facade to have openable windows, like garage doors, so that when outside is nice, you can entirely open the façade?’” he says. “Our built environment is changing our climate. We need to be bold.”
Tomasso Bitossi is presenting the closing keynote on climate-responsive design on Friday, October 25, 2:15 p.m.-3:15 p.m.
Concrete, steel, bricks and other construction materials are very carbon-intensive to produce. Cement alone accounts for 8 percent of the planet’s annual carbon emissions. To lower these emissions, innovators are deploying three main strategies: avoiding unnecessary extraction and production, switching to regenerative materials and improving decarbonization of conventional construction materials.
Several Canadian companies are working on ways to make concrete less carbon intensive. Lachine, Que.-based CarbiCrete uses industrial by-products to create “cement-free” blocks, and Calgary-based Carbon Upcycling Technologies has formulated concrete that is both stronger and 50 percent less carbon intensive. In Halifax, CarbonCure Technologies introduces recycled carbon dioxide into fresh concrete mixtures, trapping the greenhouse gas in everything from highway surfaces to the walls of apartment buildings.
Finding substitutes to the concrete and steel typically used in construction has also opened up a new market for mass timber, an engineered, wood-based material now being used in large-scale building (including the Dundas and Ossington project mentioned above). Mass timber has the advantages of being renewable, and its high-precision manufacture can produce pieces that are more airtight and, thus, the finished buildings are cheaper to heat and cool.
A group of five panellists will explore Tools for Accelerating Whole Life-Cycle Carbon Reduction, Thursday, October 24th, 2:45 p.m.-3:45 p.m.
While architects aim to create buildings that stand the test of time, the reality is that most outlive their original functions. Currently, demolition accounts for 25 percent of the world’s waste. But with a shift to a more circular approach, it doesn’t have to.
Case in point: a former abattoir in central Toronto, at 2 Tecumseth St., that has stood vacant since 2014. The challenge is to either find new uses for the structure or its materials. After years of research and consultation, a new mixed-use project is taking shape at that site. With more than 1,000 new dwellings, 2 Tecumseth will intentionally repurpose elements from the original building, including bricks, concrete flooring and wooden and steel beams.
“A lot of what we deal with around circularity in the construction industry is not a technological problem but a cultural problem,” says Carruth, a partner at GXN, a Copenhagen-based firm that uses deep research and behavioural science to promote sustainable design. “There are many benefits: quarrying less new stuff, manufacturing less virgin materials. The steel, the concrete, the glass — they’re incredibly energy-intensive throughout their production lifecycle and transportation,” she says. “I say, use what you’ve got because it’s precious. It’s like that mentality that our grandmothers had about making do and mending — you don’t just throw away your socks when they’ve got holes in them.”
According to Toronto-based startup Adaptis, 60 percent of demolition is made up of waste that could be salvaged. The company serves the construction industry as well as building owners with AI-powered tech to optimize circular design, deconstruction planning and salvage opportunities as well as optimizing operational and embodied carbon.
While addressing these issues is a necessity, it also presents a chance to redefine values and aesthetics. “It’s a great opportunity to create a connection to heritage and usher in a new aesthetic that’s centred more around respect for the environment, rather than a shiny, polished metal or a plastic, sterile environment,” says Carruth.
Susan Jayne Thams Carruth is delivering the conference’s keynote on Thursday, October 24th, 4 p.m.-5p.m.
Azure’s Human/Nature conference, which explores climate change mitigation in architecture and design, takes place October 24 and 25 at George Brown College’s Waterfront Campus.
Main image: Adobe Stock
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