Embodied carbon
An overview of projects, products and exclusive articles about embodied carbon
Project • By Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios • Offices
Paradise SE11
Paradise SE11, the UK’s lowest embodied carbon mass timber office development, has been built in the heart of Lambeth, South London. Designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBStudios) for Bywater Properties, this fully demountable structure showcases both the immediate and future potential of simple, circular, carbon-conscious, and people-centric design. Paradise demonstrates how architecture can reshape the built environment to actively address the climate emergency.
Andy Stagg
Andy Stagg
FCBStudios
A sustainable building ahead of its time
Paradise was completed five years ahead of the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge. Developed by RIBA, these voluntary performance targets measure operational energy use, water... More
Project • By Brown + Brown • Private Houses
The Arbor House
The Arbor House is a contemporary family home located to the west of the Scottish city of Aberdeen. Built in a conservation area, it was designed by Aberdeenshire-based architectural studio Brown & Brown. The residence is primarily a timber frame construction, finished with a mix of larch cladding, fibre cement cladding, and retained stone walls from the existing site.
Jim Stephenson
Brown & Brown
Evoking Californian modernism
The design of the Arbor House is evocative of Californian modernism, a style characterised by an emphasis on simplicity, functionality, and the integration of indoor and outdoor spaces. Key features include the home’s open-plan layout, large windows, natural materials, integration with nature... More
News • News • 11 Jun 2024
Pelli Clarke & Partners completes Salesforce Tower Chicago as part of riverfront master plan
Pelli Clarke & Partners has completed the Salesforce Tower Chicago, a LEED Gold-certified office tower that is the final addition to Wolf Point, a 14-year mixed-use riverfront master plan. In the city that built the world’s first skyscraper (albeit just ten stories), the 57-story Salesforce Tower is located in the heart of Chicago’s downtown. The tower sits at the place where three branches of the Chicago River converge and anchors the prominent Wolf Point master plan development.
Jason O’Rear
Jason O’Rear
Pelli Clarke & Partners
Wolf Point was once the home of Chicago’s first commercial settlements in the early 19th century. The land was later all but abandoned (it had... More
News • Innovations • 15 Apr 2024
Albion Stone creates stone bricks from “unloved” stone
A stone brick is a sustainable building material made using stone blocks and slabs that do not meet the expectations of today’s sanitized stone ranges. Stone bricks are an environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing contemporary building material. These bricks have a carbon intensity reduction of around 75 percent when compared with traditional clay-fired bricks. The carbon footprint of a stone brick is therefore a quarter of that attributed to a clay brick. (Carbon intensity refers to “the emission rate of a given pollutant relative to the intensity of a specific activity or an industrial production process.”)
Ivan Jones
Albion Stone and Portland Stone
Originally established in 1927, Albion Ston... More
News • Detail • 29 Jun 2023
Detail: Creating Kampala’s new rammed earth and earth brick arts centre
32° East Arts Centre is Kampala’s first purpose-built community arts space and the new home of 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust. Located in Kabalagala, a central neighborhood in Kampala, the centre is a creative hub for the city’s artist community: it provides a welcoming, inspiring, and nurturing space — a place where artists can work and socialize. The arts centre was designed by London-based New Makers Bureau in collaboration with Kampala-based Localworks. New Makers Bureau places a great emphasis on architecture that is craft-led and low in embodied carbon; Localworks is a multidisciplinary design and build studio specializing in ecological architecture.
Timothy Latim
32° East Arts Centre is a buildi... More
News • Detail • 1 Jun 2023
Detail: A balanced carbon-based design for The Arbor House
The Arbor House is a contemporary family home located to the west of the Scottish city of Aberdeen. Built in a conservation area, it was designed by Aberdeenshire-based architectural studio Brown & Brown. The two-story residence is constructed primarily of a timber frame and finished with a mix of board-marked concrete, larch cladding, and stone walls retained from the existing site.
Jim Stephenson
Jim Stephenson
The meticulous design of The Arbor House is evocative of Californian modernism: A contemporary, cantilevered home, it is situated in harmony with the surrounding landscape, and blurs the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces. Moreover, its design places a strong emphasis on craftsmanship and carefully... More
News • Detail • 20 Apr 2023
Detail: Engineered timber structure of The Black & White Building
Established in 1997 by Andrew Waugh and Anthony Thistleton, Waugh Thistleton Architects is a London-based practice that produces thoughtful and sustainable architecture and design. A leader in the use of engineered timber, the practice has built an enviable reputation in the field. Waugh Thistleton Architects had a keen interest in developing new and innovative ways of building from the outset. Its first cross-laminated timber (CLT) project was realized in 2003. Its latest, The Black & White Building, was officially opened in January 2023, twenty years later.
Ed Reeve
In a conversation with Andrew Waugh, the architect explains, with a sense of achievement, that “we have built 29 engineered timber buildings and designed b... More
News • News • 3 Apr 2023
LEVS architecture shares its carbon-based design approach with freely accessible publication
Based on years of data-driven research by LEVS architecture office in Amsterdam, Carbon-Based Design is a comprehensive publication that takes a concrete, carbon-budget-based approach to architectural design for the built environment in line with the Paris Agreement’s climate goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. Published earlier this year in Dutch, the English version of the publication and resource is now freely available for all as a PDF at the site carbonbaseddesign.nl
Courtesy LEVS architecten
To address the targets of the 2016 Paris Agreement, a limited amount of C02 can still be added to the atmosphere. LEVS thinks of this limited amount as a carbon budget, which can be managed in a way that directly affects... More