Carbon - by Matti Kuittinen & Alan Organschi & Andrew Ruff (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The rapid increase in global carbon emissions over the past century has created a climate crisis that threatens to disrupt the world's cultural, economic, and social fabric. The building sector is responsible for well over half of the world's extraction and consumption of carbon-based material and hydrocarbon energy. If the current design and construction approach remains unchecked, and as the world's population growth continues to accelerate, the building sector's demand for raw material and energy for new construction will continue to exacerbate the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations."--

Book Synopsis

A comprehensive approach to design that integrates sustainable principles and design strategies for decarbonized construction

Representing an international collaboration between academics and architects in the United States and Europe, Carbon: A Field Manual for Designers and Builders offers professionals in the field an approach to sustainable design that embraces building science principles, life-cycle analysis, and design strategies in carbon neutral construction. The book also contains background information on carbon in construction materials and in the building design process.

This book is filled with illustrative diagrams and drawings that help evaluate the potential impact of design decisions for creating carbon emissions. Written by and for designers and builders, the book includes a compelling pair of case studies that explore carbon-reducing strategies, suggests steps for assessing a building's carbon footprint, and reviews carbon storages and circulation of materials. The guidelines detailed in the book can be adopted, replicated, and deployed to reduce carbon emissions and create more sustainable buildings. This important book:

• Offers an effective approach to sustainable design in construction
• Integrates building science principles, life-cycle analysis, and design strategies in carbon neutral construction
• Describes a methodology for quantifying the flow of carbon in the built environment
• Provides an analysis of carbon-reducing strategies based on a case study of a building designed by the authors

Written for practicing professionals in architecture and construction, Carbon: A Field Guide for Designers and Builders is a must-have resource for professionals who are dedicated to creating sustainable projects.

From the Back Cover

A comprehensive approach to design that integrates sustainable principles and design strategies for decarbonized construction

Representing an international collaboration of researchers and architects in the United States and Europe, Carbon: A Field Manual for Building Designers offers professionals in the field an approach to sustainable design that embraces building science principles, life-cycle assessment and design strategies in carbon neutral construction. The book also contains background information on carbon in construction materials and in the building design process.

This book is filled with illustrative diagrams and drawings that help evaluate the potential impact of design decisions for creating carbon emissions. Written by and for designers and builders, the book includes a compelling pair of case studies that explore carbon-reducing strategies, suggests steps for assessing a building's carbon footprint, and reviews carbon storages and circulation of materials. The guidelines detailed in the book can be adopted, replicated, and deployed to reduce carbon emissions and create more sustainable buildings.

Written for practicing professionals in architecture and construction, Carbon: A Field Manual for Building Designers is a must-have resource for professionals who are dedicated to creating sustainable projects.

Review Quotes

"This is a must-read book. It achieves the rare outcome of being a successful volume for design practitioners (who should know what to do) as well as design students (who don't yet know what to do). But it is also very useful to educators, policymakers, engineers, local authorities, industry professionals and - really - anyone who takes seriously the sheer impacts caused by the global built environment to ecosystems, biodiversity, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land use, urban fabric transformation, energy demand, social shifts and implications for the lives of millions who live in, or at the margins of, it."
--Francesco Pomponi, Buildings & Cities

"A recommendable book to get started with LCA in building construction with focus on CO2 or carbon as well as concepts for decarbonization.... The basic LCA aspects are presented in an easy to follow manner.... Also worth to mention: many specific LCA terms which are helpful in discussing with LCA experts such as cradle-to-gate, end-of-life, end-of-waste or closing the loop are addressed in easy to understand words."
--nbau, NACHHALTIG BAUEN

"Its explanatory tone runs like a seam through this book; copiously illustrated in black and white and on a thin, uncoated paper that intimates the authors' awareness of its own carbon footprint. It's worth it alone just for Chapter 3, 'Case Studies in Decarbonisation'"
--The RIBA Journal

About the Author

Matti Kuittinen is an architect and professor of resource-efficient construction at Aalto University, Finland. As a policymaker, he has been developing whole life carbon assessment methods in Finland and the EU.

Alan Organschi is a design principal and a partner at Gray Organschi Architecture, in New Haven, CT and a senior member of the design and technology faculty of the Yale School of Architecture. He currently serves as the Director of the Innovation Lab of the global initiative Bauhaus Earth in Berlin, Germany.

Andrew Ruff (New Haven, CT) is the Research Coordinator of the Timber City Research Initiative, the Design Director at Gray Organschi Architecture, and a Visiting Critic at the Yale School of Architecture. He previously held appointments as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University and a Lecturer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and served as part of the guest faculty at the Roger Williams School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation, where he led design research into the applications of mass timber assemblies in mid-rise building applications. In addition to his professional degree in Architecture, he holds a Master of Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture and has lectured and published on the subject of mass timber buildings in the global carbon economy.