Seeing the wood for the trees: placing ecology at the heart of construction
/An essay on applying systems thinking to the built environment
Written with Andy Simmonds of the AECB
In recent years, as energy efficiency targets for new buildings have tightened, attention has turned to cutting the embodied carbon of buildings by switching from materials like concrete and steel to lower carbon alternatives like timber. But if we are serious about solving the ecological emergency as well as stabilising the climate, we must look even further than embodied carbon, and think more deeply about the core values we apply to materials and buildings, and the manner in which we use them.