"Materials: An Environmental Primer"- a new view through the lens of upfront carbon
Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams may have written this for architects, but it is great reading for anyone.
The most important line in my recent book is, “When you look at the world through the lens of upfront carbon, everything changes.” When I wrote The Story of Upfront Carbon, I decided to avoid getting too technical or architectural; I was not writing it for architects but for the public, and I wanted to explain that there are upfront carbon emissions from making everything, not just buildings. But in retrospect, I think I could have included a bit more technical information without losing my general audience.
Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams hit the right balance in their new book, Materials: An Environmental Primer. This book is written for architects (it’s published by RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects) but is accessible, free of architectural jargon, and useful on both sides of the Atlantic. The authors write “the purpose of this book is to help designers navigate the minefield of choosing the most appropriate material for a particular application on a project,” but this is not a dispassionate textbook.
Materials: An Environmental Primer starts with solid introduction to the issues of embodied and upfront carbon while not forgetting that we also have a biodiversity crisis and should be worrying about the health impact of our choices. If anyone complains that I didn’t sufficiently explain the technical details in my book, I will direct them here.
This is followed by Materials A-Z, but there are many letters missing; this is not an encyclopedia. There are only 17 materials covered, including the big elephants in the room (concrete, timber, and steel). Some are big categories, like insulation or plastics, and some fairly obscure like mycelium, cork, and straw, all of which could have been notes in the insulation or plastics sections but get their own chapters here.
I consider myself knowledgeable enough to look closely at some of the materials, and I found the content thorough and useful but also often entertaining, although they are written by proponents of the material and tend to accentuate the positive.
Aluminum
As an example, aluminum (or aluminium as they spell it in Britain) is described as “infinitely recyclable” and the author concludes “used wisely, well-detailed and carefully executed aluminum can play a role in a sustainable built environment.” However, author Michael Stacey notes that only 34% of global aluminum demand is met from recycled aluminum. That’s because big users like aerospace, electronics and even the automotive industry prefer virgin aluminum to get the alloys right and avoid impurities, but also because we still do a terrible job of recycling.
As I noted in my post What colour is your aluminum? It makes a massive difference, we have to reduce primary demand for aluminum, quoting Carl Zimrig: “Because even such intense and virtuous recycling that we do with aluminum, even if we catch every single can and aluminum foil container, it’s not enough. We still have to use less of the stuff if we are going to stop the environmental destruction and pollution that making virgin aluminum causes." Aluminum has a big role to play in building, but I find it hard to call it sustainable.
Stone
I have been smitten with stone lately; Engineer Steve Webb’s office was the only one I visited when I was in London. (see Architects and engineers like Steve Webb are rethinking the conventional wisdom of how we build) He is one of the authors of the stone chapter, and it’s a great introduction to a material that we have mostly forgotten how to use. The stone pioneers are teaching us new ways to use it, writing in the takeaway:
Modern methods of analysis and manufacturing mean that stone can be used in ways it wasn’t before. Stone can be analysed with computer software, it can be cut to precision with industrial diamonds, and it can be post-tensioned with high-tensile steel.
This chapter is an example of one of the wonders of this book; its sometimes eccentric choices might encourage architects and engineers to try new materials and methods with lower environmental impacts. Although, once again, the authors accentuate the positive; read Brian Potter of Construction Physics for a bit of cold water.
Timber
I was very curious to see how timber was handled, given how so much that is written about it suggests that we can save the world by storing all that carbon in our buildings. Marlene Cramer and Gabriele Tamagnone have been particularly circumspect and balanced, writing, “often, timber used in construction products has lowered embodied carbon than comparable building materials.” That is remarkably understated. In their concluding takeaways, they write:
“We are probably growing enough wood, we are just using too much. Treating timber as a finite, valuable material and allocating resources to be used to their full potential is essential.”
The people who really know wood get this. When Andrew Waugh took me through his Black and White building, he proudly noted that it used 40% less wood fibre per square meter than buildings they designed years earlier. Fewer and fewer architects are making a big deal about how much carbon they are storing. The mantra with wood, like every other material, is “use less stuff.”
Hartman and Williams certainly get this and conclude with what they call a new approach to materials, including my favourite, “use less.”
As noted earlier, this is not an encyclopedia. The chapters on the materials reflect the proclivities and enthusiasms of the authors who are not disinterested observers. On the other hand, you feel their passion for the subject. I expected this book to be useful and full of good information, but I never suspected that a book like this could be so entertaining.