Soak up carbon into beautiful, healthy buildings that heal the climate "Green buildings" that slash energy use and carbon emissions are all the rage, but they aren't enough. The hidden culprit is embodied carbon — the carbon emitted when materials are mined, manufactured, and transported — comprising some 10% of global emissions. With the built environment doubling by 2030, buildings are a carbon juggernaut threatening to overwhelm the climate. It doesn't have to be this way. Like never before in history, buildings can become part of the climate solution. With biomimicry and innovation, we can pull huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it up as walls, roofs, foundations, and insulation. We can literally make buildings out of the sky with a massive positive impact. The New Carbon Architecture is a paradigm-shifting tour of the innovations in architecture and construction that are making this happen. Office towers built from advanced wood products; affordable, low-carbon concrete alternatives; plastic cleaned from the oceans and turned into building blocks. We can even grow insulation from mycelium. A tour de force by the leaders in the field, The New Carbon Architecture will fire the imagination of architects, engineers, builders, policy makers, and everyone else captivated by the possibility of architecture to heal the climate and produce safer, healthier, and more beautiful buildings.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Preface: Buildings Made of Sky Introduction A Word about "Carbon" 1. Beyond Zero: The Time Value of Carbon by Erin McDade A Global Carbon Limit Buildings Are the Problem; Buildings Are the Solution Zero by 2050 The Zero Net Carbon Gold Standard Embodied Carbon: Getting to Real Zero Emissions Now Hurt More than Emissions Later: The Relative Importance of Embodied Carbon Embodied Carbon in the Future The Time Value of Carbon Zero Energy in a Nutshell by Ann V. Edminister 2. Counting Carbon: What We Know and How We Know It by Catherine De Wolf, Barbara Rodriguez Droguett, and Kathrina Simonen Building Carbon Neutral The Relative Impact of Embodied Carbon in Typical Buildings Comparing Structural Materials Comparing LCA Methods Concrete Steel Wood Other Structural Materials Nonstructural Materials Comparing the Embodied Carbon of Buildings Getting to Zero: Embodied Carbon 3. Rebuild: What You Build Matters, What You Don't Build Matters More by Larry Strain We Can't Build Our Way Out of This Reuse: A Complete Strategy Reducing Embodied Carbon Reducing Operating Carbon: Renovation + Upgrade Upgrading to Zero Retrofit Opportunities Energy Efficiency Opportunities Net-zero Opportunities Saving Embodied Carbon Opportunities 4. Wood: Like Never Before Mass Timber Construction by Frances Yang and Andrew Lawrence The Carbon Argument So How Tall Can Timber Really Go? Enter Cross-laminated Timber (CLT) Stiffness Fire Acoustics Seismic Performance Beyond Carbon The Future Seeing the Forests for the Mass Timber by Jason Grant 5. Straw and Other Fibers: A Second Harvest with Chris Magwood and Massey Burke Straw Bales and Straw Bale Panels Prefabricated Straw Bale Wall Panels Straw Blocks Straw Panels Bonded Plant Fiber Insulation Systems The Planet's Sixth Carbon Sink: A Success Story by Craig White 6. Concrete: The Reinvention of Artificial Rock with Fernando Martirena and Paul Jaquin What Is Concrete? The Problem with Concrete The Reinvention Is On But First, Some Basics Clay: The First Cement by Paul Jaquin Historical Building Using Clay as a Binder What Makes Clay Special? Bonding in Clay Sheets, Layers, and Assemblages Sheets Layers The Assemblage Friction Suction How Strong Is Clay Concrete? Humidity Buffering and Thermal Mass Future Rethinking Cement by Fernando Martirena More Ways to Reinvent Concrete What About Reinforcing — Steel and More 7. Plastic: So Great, So Awful — Some New Directions by Mikhail Davis, Wes Sullens, and Wil Srubar Introduction Biopolymers and Bioplastics Plant Biopolymers Animal Biopolymers Bacterial Biopolymers The Bioplastics Dilemma Existing Plastics in the World The Scale of the Plastics Problem: How Much Is Already Out There? What To Do With All That Existing Plastic? Barriers to Plastics Recovery and Recycling Bright Spots for Plastics What You Can Do: The Low-carbon Plastics Hierarchy Guidelines: The Low-carbon Plastics Hierarchy From Obstacles to Opportunities to Solutions: Can We Redeem Plastic? Trash to Treasure: Can We Harvest the Existing Plastic Pollution from the Environment to Make New Products? Carbon-loving Plastics: Can We Produce Plastics that Capture or Store Carbon? Paths to Bio-based Plastics Regenerative Agriculture GHG to Plastic Carbon-plastic Composites: Can We Put New Carbon into Old Plastic? Closing the Loop: Can We Truly Manage Plastics in a Circular System? 8. To Your Health: The Health Benefits and Impacts of Natural Building Materials by Pete Walker, Andrew Thomson, and Daniel Maskell Health Benefits Moisture Buffering Materials The Breathing Wall Concept: Vapor Permeability and Capillarity Controlling Volatile Organic Compounds Health Risks Radioactivity Silica Dust Handling Lime Protective Treatments Concluding Comments 9. Size Matters: Can Buildings Be Too Tall? by Ann Edminster The Height Problem Aspects of the Problem Ground Zero: Height as a Driver of Embodied Carbon Will Transit Catch Up? Middle Ground, Perhaps Livability Resiliency Conclusions Editor's Endnote 10. Technology and Localization: Trends at Play Nanotechnology Biotechnology and Biomimicry Localization: The Convergence of Social and Technological Trends Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and 3-D Printing 11. Action Plan: Places to Intervene in a System Places to Intervene in a System Building Codes and Standards Incentives Research Information Flows A Price on Carbon Necessary Afternote #1 Necessary Afternote #2 Necessary Afternote #3: Which System Are We Talking About? Necessary Afternote #4: In Which the Republicans Make the Case Afterword Contributing Authors Index A Note about the Publisher