I attended 7th grade in a building that was built of brick and wood. In 8th grade, I was moved to the new junior high, a formed concrete building in the modern fortress architecture style.Now, it seems, what was old is new again. Wood is making a comeback, with a focus on a green building strategy called “embodied” carbon reduction. The goal is to lower the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the construction processes.“Buildings account for more than one-third of the world’s carbon emissions each year. This year, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center held its first statewide embodied carbon reduction challenge, awarding Payette a grand prize in June for its design of the UMass research building. The competition spotlighted a variety of renovation
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Now, it seems, what was old is new again. Wood is making a comeback, with a focus on a green building strategy called “embodied” carbon reduction. The goal is to lower the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the construction processes.
“Buildings account for more than one-third of the world’s carbon emissions each year. This year, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center held its first statewide embodied carbon reduction challenge, awarding Payette a grand prize in June for its design of the UMass research building. The competition spotlighted a variety of renovation and construction projects — from office space to conference centers to affordable housing — that aim to lower building emissions long before the last thermostat is installed and the lights first switch on.
“A runner-up in the competition is a new “Treehouse” conference center at Harvard University’s Allston campus: a structure that, when completed, will look a bit like a futuristic spaceship wrapped in glass. The designers managed to eliminate more than half of initial estimates of embodied carbon by swapping out cement, one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, for a more environmentally friendly concrete mix that uses recycled glass.
“In other parts of the structure, architects opted to ditch concrete altogether in favor of spruce and Alaskan yellow timber, which have a lower carbon footprint.
“Meanwhile, the Bunker Hill public housing redevelopment in Charlestown, which entered its Building M into the clean energy competition, turned to cross-laminated timber, a reinforced wood product popular in Europe since the early 2000s that has more recently gained traction in the United States. The timber requires much less energy than manufacturing concrete or steel.”
Not only a retreat from brutalist architectural design, but more environmentally friendly.