What world is your building design creating?

It’s no secret that buildings can use massive amounts of resources during construction and maintenance. The industry is fact responsible for 39% of global emissions, and 33% of global waste.

However, not all buildings are made equal. Architects have a huge potential to reduce emissions and improve our health through their work.

World leaders and corporations are pledging to to cut carbon dioxide emissions and end deforestation by 2030. But how exactly does that influence the climate?

A good resource to understand this is the Climate Interactive simulator, which shows the direct and interrelated effects of different actions on the temperature increase, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy mix. It even lets you create your own scenarios (you’ll see that getting below 1.5 degrees is quite tricky — even in theory!).

Getting the world to stay under 1.5°C of warming on average is essential to keep our world livable. Anything above 2°C degrees of warming starts to look very grim…

Take a look at the graphic below by Carbon Brief to see what we mean.

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this question yet.

When trying to reach this goal, 3 key principles are generally considered:

1. Reduce operational energy needs and/or emissions
2. Reduce the embodied carbon
3. Design with circularity in mind

At 2050 Materials, we are developing a methodology to compare building products and benchmark them against specific targets. We aim to enable the tracking and comparison of buildings in the face of climate change.

• LETI Climate Emergency Guide
• Defining and Aligning: Whole Life Carbon & Embodied Carbon
• Ten ways in which architecture is addressing climate change — Dezeen

Sustainable buildings and built environments aim to reduce the use rates of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create a healthy and safe place for people.

Architects can design with sustainability in mind by reducing both embodied and operational carbon, working with contractors throughout the building life cycle to minimize waste, and selecting material with low embodied carbon. Read our guide for more detail on material selection.

When we started working on building a digital library to enable architects to design the most sustainable buildings possible, we thought a lot about our name. Net-zero targets are set for the year 2050 which is 29 years from now…

2050 Materials is the platform for the construction materials of the future, available today. Our research and product data allows architects and contractors to design buildings as if we’re already living in the imaginary net-zero year of 2050.

Reach out to us to find out more about our launch, and how we can help you find, compare and specify truly sustainable products today.

– Phanos Hadjikyriakou, Co-founder