Five Ideas on the Future of Architecture

This talk was a guest lecture at Xavier University in September 2020. Below is the slideshow and rough outline.

Context: How is the built environment contributing to climate change?

1. Operational & embodied emissions: Buildings are responsible for nearly 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions, when one considers both operating emissions and the embodied or "upfront" emissions -- the carbon emitted during the manufacture of building materials. Concrete production alone account for 8% of global emissions; steel accounts for roughly 7%.

2. Scale of impact: Global floor area is projected to double between 2020 and 2060, meaning that how we choose to build could either be a key part of the solution to climate change, or conversely exceed the remaining carbon budget for a 1.5 or 2 degC temperature rise (i.e. for a habitable planet).

3. Refrigerants used in building air conditioning are also significant, because they are often thousands of times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. R-410A, one of the more common, has a Global Warming Potential of 2088.

4. Infrastructure has locked in unsustainable patterns of development -- e.g., car-centered cities, centralized electric grids, and un-cyclical waste management systems. These in turn contribute to the erroneous sense that "this is the way things are" and "there is no alternative."

5. Worldview: The design of most buildings and neighborhoods disconnects us from natural cycles and systems. We don't see where our water, food, or energy comes from or where our waste goes; we don't experience our part in ecological systems and flows of matter and energy.

Context: The impacts of climate change are already here.

Many parts of the United States are already experiening increases in water stress, extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, and extreme rainfall, among other impacts. These will only accellerate in the coming decades, even in scenarios in which we stabilize carbon emissions.

Adaptation must not supplant mitigation as the primary focus, but some adaptation will be necessary.

The future: five ideas

1. Radical efficiency. It is possible today to build buildings that use 80% less energy than conventional new buildings -- before adding solar. It's possible to retrofit existing buildings to achieve 50% to 70% reductions in energy use. And getting there is not cost-prohibitive. Efficiency can provide up to 50% of the decarbonization we need by 2050.

2. Carbon sequestration. Can buildings be built out of materials that sequester carbon over their lifespans? These generally fall into two categories: (1) innovative cement technologies that either replace cement entirely or sequester carbon during curing; and (2) bio-based materials that store carbon pulled out of the atmosphere by plants. Mass timber falls in the latter category. The actual amount sequestered by bio-based materials depends heavily on production practices and, in the case of timber, forest management. Better tracking and reporting is needed to make this promise real.

3. Embodied equity. Can we begin to look at social and ethical indicators over a material's life cycle and supply chain in the same way that we track carbon or energy? Could we look at embodied exploitation? Embodied capital bias? Embodied centralization? Embodied ownership? Can our material choices help to create the economy we want, one buildings at a time?

4. Decentralized infrastructure. Many of our built infrastructures are centralized, unsustainable, and brittle: fossil power plants, waste treatment plants, food supply chains. Architecture can help to create new decentralized, sustainable, and resilient infrastructures from the bottom-up, supplanting and displacing the old system incrementally: renewable micro-grids, low-impact stormwater management, rooftop gardens. This also has the advantage of making visible and tangible our part in ecological processes -- helping to shape a new worldview.

5. Cyclical metabolisms. In terms of materials, buildings can use materials without toxins and that are desgined to biodegrade or by recycled at the end of life. They can also contribute to the larger metabolism of the city, helping to re-shape currently unbalanced flows of carbon (energy), nitrogen (food), and water.

Some ideas that didn't make the cut

1. Participatory design. Architecture is an expression of power (shaping the world toward an end) and of values (what should be done / what is most important). Currently those ends and values are determined by the wealthy patrons who can afford to hire architects. To become an agent of change, architecture must find ways to become an exercise of people power. The process itself can help to foster robust discourse and create the solidarity necessary to rein in the destructive forces of growth capitalism.

2. Electrification. Buildings should not burn fossil fuels. Not only does this emit carbon, it's also a huge contributor to urban air pollution and an even larger contributor to poor indoor air quality, which in turn is associated with a variety of health impacts, from athsma to cancer.

3. Grid-integrated buildings. How can buildings help support and create a renewable energy system? Such a system will produce more energy at certain times of day than others. Buildings can be designed to shift their peak loads to enable a larger share of renewables. They can also help provide some of the energy storage that will be needed.

4. Buildings as pedagogy. This is the idea, proposed by David Orr, that buildings can teach by rendering visible our place within ecological systems. For example, a Living Machine makes us aware of how water and waste are treated, and that they return to the world after our use.