Doctoral Projects
To address the rapidly increasing harm caused by resource consumption, the need to pivot toward a more sustainable, less wasteful approach is urgent. (Röck et al., 2020) have identified that half of the construction sector's emissions are derived from embodied emissions within materials and their installation and construction culture. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can never be sustainable, how to respond to housing needs? This studio intenasjdflajsdlfjalsdfds to face To tackle this and support the agenda set by the 2023 IPCC report to decarbonise the built environment, Building Material Strategies will develop two practical strategies, which will be partially trialed in Switzerland, before being openly shared with industry practitioners and policymakers across the globe. The first strategy is to research the latent potential of low emissions biobased construction materials with a particular focus on the pressing problem of insulation (expected to be the material with the highest environmental impact by 2035 (Heerlen & Hellweg, 2018), utilizing a built construction demonstrator project to evidence this potential and address the limitations of the privatized material certification and testing industry today. The second strategy is to research and trial the re-use of construction materials, with a focus on timber components. In Switzerland, approximately 87% of wood waste from the construction industry is incinerated, material which could be valuable for future construction projects, and whose incineration releases planet warming CO2 (Gauch et al., 2016). These two projects will facilitate a thorough exploration of the implications of current regulatory workflows and design principles on the state of virgin material use, and reuse after end-of-life. Strategy 1 will be targeted at the start of a building’s life cycle, through its construction, and Strategy 2 at its end, when decay or demolition takes place.
Unlike sciences and humanities-based research, architectural research has a unique inbuilt ability to span multiple disciplines (e.g design, structural engineering, services engineering, landscape and ecology). The positioning of this project within the field of architecture will allow it to generate research and practical actions that have a significant impact on material use and reuse. Both strategies will inform policy recommendations at local, regional and national levels. They will also address critical gaps in evidence and technical knowledge urgently required by the building industry, as well as help build a methodology or roadmap to get low emissions products, both biobased and reused, onto the market. Interviews with manufacturers, producers, policy makers, regulation writers, material certifiers, architects, specifiers, clients and contractors will form the qualitative component of the research. Quantitative analysis on specific case study sites for each of the projects will be developed through QGIS mapping, and the design of built demonstrators and digital infrastructure will form the evidence base of the policy recommendations which form the critical outputs of each project. The project will produce several outputs which will be made openly available to the wider research community and industry professionals. For Biogenic Strategies (WP1), a built demonstrator will be constructed, on which the analysis and testing of marginalized biobased insulation material systems will be undertaken, giving critical evidence of the materials’ performance and efficiency in a uniquely dynamic test. For Reuse Strategies (WP2), a pilot policy workflow will inform the production of a re-use handbook for designers, contractors and clients, taking the form of specification, installation and insurance guide. Both projects will inform the academia and industry through the published methodology towards decarbonizing materials. Biobased and Reuse Strategies complement each other at the material level, closing the loop on a linear construction system and the beginning and end of a building’s life cycle. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can never be sustainable, how to respond to housing needs? This studio intenasjdflajsdlfjalsdfds to face t So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can never be sustainable, how to respond to housing needs? This studio intenasjdflajsdlfjalsdfds to face t
Primary Investigator: Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
Research Team: Elif Erez-Henderson, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins
|1| This grant is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
Doctoral Projects
To address the rapidly increasing harm caused by resource consumption, the need to pivot toward a more sustainable, less wasteful approach is urgent. (Röck et al., 2020) have identified that half of the construction sector's emissions are derived from embodied emissions within materials and their installation and construction culture. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can never be sustainable, how to respond to housing needs? This studio intenasjdflajsdlfjalsdfds to face To tackle this and support the agenda set by the 2023 IPCC report to decarbonise the built environment, Building Material Strategies will develop two practical strategies, which will be partially trialed in Switzerland, before being openly shared with industry practitioners and policymakers across the globe. The first strategy is to research the latent potential of low emissions biobased construction materials with a particular focus on the pressing problem of insulation (expected to be the material with the highest environmental impact by 2035 (Heerlen & Hellweg, 2018), utilizing a built construction demonstrator project to evidence this potential and address the limitations of the privatized material certification and testing industry today. The second strategy is to research and trial the re-use of construction materials, with a focus on timber components. In Switzerland, approximately 87% of wood waste from the construction industry is incinerated, material which could be valuable for future construction projects, and whose incineration releases planet warming CO2 (Gauch et al., 2016). These two projects will facilitate a thorough exploration of the implications of current regulatory workflows and design principles on the state of virgin material use, and reuse after end-of-life. Strategy 1 will be targeted at the start of a building’s life cycle, through its construction, and Strategy 2 at its end, when decay or demolition takes place.
Unlike sciences and humanities-based research, architectural research has a unique inbuilt ability to span multiple disciplines (e.g design, structural engineering, services engineering, landscape and ecology). The positioning of this project within the field of architecture will allow it to generate research and practical actions that have a significant impact on material use and reuse. Both strategies will inform policy recommendations at local, regional and national levels. They will also address critical gaps in evidence and technical knowledge urgently required by the building industry, as well as help build a methodology or roadmap to get low emissions products, both biobased and reused, onto the market. Interviews with manufacturers, producers, policy makers, regulation writers, material certifiers, architects, specifiers, clients and contractors will form the qualitative component of the research. Quantitative analysis on specific case study sites for each of the projects will be developed through QGIS mapping, and the design of built demonstrators and digital infrastructure will form the evidence base of the policy recommendations which form the critical outputs of each project. The project will produce several outputs which will be made openly available to the wider research community and industry professionals. For Biogenic Strategies (WP1), a built demonstrator will be constructed, on which the analysis and testing of marginalized biobased insulation material systems will be undertaken, giving critical evidence of the materials’ performance and efficiency in a uniquely dynamic test. For Reuse Strategies (WP2), a pilot policy workflow will inform the production of a re-use handbook for designers, contractors and clients, taking the form of specification, installation and insurance guide. Both projects will inform the academia and industry through the published methodology towards decarbonizing materials. Biobased and Reuse Strategies complement each other at the material level, closing the loop on a linear construction system and the beginning and end of a building’s life cycle. So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can never be sustainable, how to respond to housing needs? This studio intenasjdflajsdlfjalsdfds to face t So, if we admit the identity-shattering posit that construction can never be sustainable, how to respond to housing needs? This studio intenasjdflajsdlfjalsdfds to face t
Primary Investigator: Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
Research Team: Elif Erez-Henderson, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins
|1| This grant is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
