21st Century Raw Earth Architecture
In response to global warming in the construction industry, timber in architecture is booming, which is good, because forests sequester carbon at their highest rates during their prime growth period before being mature enough to be cut down. However, the huge and little addressed problem with the timber industry is that the monoculture forests which supply the market with high-tech engineered timber products, are themselves biological deserts, because the chemicals which these forests rely on to artificially boost their productivity inhibit other forms of life. In other words, our techniques are not holistic enough. We address carbon sequestering issues through living forests, but limit the life to the specific kinds which suit our industries, while the enormous cost of biodiversity loss still passes unchecked. According to the Global Status Report 2017 published by the World Green Building Council, the construction industry and the architecture it produces are responsible for the approximately 36% of global final energy use. Contrast this with the roughly 2% of global carbon emissions from private flight travel and it is immediately perceptible that the media discussion around the responsibility of the individuals is imbalanced, compared with the responsibility of industry professionals, developers and investors. This emphasises the need to search for new building techniques which are less ecologically harmful while still being culturally relevant and attractive.
“We address carbon sequestering issues through living forests, but limit the life to the specific kinds which suit our industries, while the enormous cost of biodiversity loss still passes unchecked.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2019/jan/25/ our-house-is-on-fire-gretathunberg16-urges-leaders-toact-on-climate
There has been a slow revival, in the last 40 years or so, of the ancient techniques of raw earth building which have proven to have a dramatically lower embodied energy footprint in construction, building use and end of use deconstruction than standard industrial materials. The use of the words ‘raw’ and ‘unstabilized’ referrer to the understanding that earth does not need to be baked to produce bricks or stabilized with concrete, as it then looses many of
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