Greenbuild San Francisco
Design Innovation & Application
Buildings are responsible for roughly 40% of total global greenhouse gas emissions making them the largest single source of emissions. To keep temperature rise below 1.5°C, we must stay within a “carbon budget” and reduce our carbon emissions by 50 – 65% globally by 2030. For a code compliant building constructed in California today, by 2030, about 75% of the carbon it has emitted over its 8 year life will be from “embodied carbon”, the carbon emitted in the extraction and manufacture of the materials and products that go into the building, as well as the construction activities themselves. Unlike carbon emitted in the operation of the building (“operational carbon”), it is impossible to optimize or in any way reduce embodied carbon after the building is constructed. With the 2030 deadline looming, timing is everything. We must shift how we think about building design and construction to address the climate crisis. If we are able to reuse and repurpose existing buildings and their materials, embodied carbon can be dramatically reduced.
In this session, attendees will be provided with an existing building and embodied carbon data. During the charrette, attendees will design a larger building on the same site with a different typology. Attendees will work in groups to generate creative ideas for reuse of the entire building as well as reusing or repurposing building components, with the goal of lowering the embodied carbon of the new building and minimizing demolition waste sent to landfill. While this session is not rating system specific, we will touch on LEED NC v4 & v4.1 MR credit 1, Building Life-Cycle Impact Reduction. The session will end with each group sharing their strategies, inspiring a new mindset in design.
Jill Edelman, AIA, LEED BC+C
Founder
DRaGonfly Regenerative Architecture & Design
Laura Karnath, AIA, NCARB
Senior Enclosure Technical Designer
Walter P Moore