Material Sources pt. 1
There has been a shift towards timber products as building materials that can help humanity address part of the carbon issue that is majorly contributed to by the architecture industry. Those pioneers of Mass timber products proved its versatility as a building material for constructions from small to large. These engineered and manufactured materials are widely available worldwide thanks to an ever-expanding and improving global supply chain. Amongst all of the voices in the architecture, forestry, and milling industries, there is no overall consensus on how timber directly addresses issues of carbon neutrality in the Anthropocene and during a crisis of rapid climate change. As practitioners continue to prove timber's viability in urban architecture and multidisciplinary teams work to establish and test code requirements and the product's viability for taller and taller buildings, it is time to pause and reflect. How exactly have our Mass Timber experiments in the United States impacted the carbon neutrality of our cities? Where is our timber being sourced? And how does the supply chain from forest to final constructed building affect the true impact that utilizing wood has on urban environments?
“how does the supply chain from forest to final constructed building affect the true impact that utilizing wood has on urban environments?”
These are all questions that need to be explored as the market continues to be built for these products that architects are ordering en-masse for their shiny new timber homes and towers. To establish a conversation around the issue of the carbon neutrality of each building, one must begin to untangle and quantify the myriad of parts that go into constructing timber buildings in the 21st century. As other conversations around material sourcing have shown, the most sustainable building practices source materials from as close to the construction site as possible.
Growing schools of thought and practice, such as those found in the ever more prevalent farm-to-table restaurants and permaculture communities, demonstrate a potential parallel to the practice of building. The ethics that stem from these movements inspire more significant change in the architecture and construction industries. Permaculture's guiding principles lead individuals to design their lifestyles in a way that dramatically reduces their impact on the environment, produces enough resources for humans to live from, and strives to create a symbiotic relationship between people and the earth's resources. Achieving this practice will only be possible for those who can locally source goods to sustain human life.1
The source of timber for new mass timber constructions in the united states is not widely talked about in the context of understanding and tracking the sustainability of a material, except to those that are industry evangelists who, at the onset, may care little for the true carbon neutrality of a product in the short term, especially when time, money, and practicality come into play. While I am not proposing that the construction industry can or should have such a radical change in ethics overnight, the words of Aldo Leopold echo through the actions of both perma-culturists and the sustainable forestry industry and ought to continue to make changes through the supply chain. Farm-to-table and permaculture guiding principles may offer a more appropriate lens for building scientists and architects through which to look.1,2
These explorations need to happen to establish a market in the United States. I want to explore this thought and investigate the impact of using timber as a building material on carbon neutrality, economies of scale, and how the industry has changed over time and between project scales. Are buildings that are built in Austria and source timber from Austria more sustainable and cheaper to produce than those constructed in the united states that source from Germany?3
The next installment will look to investigate the current state of building material tracking, looking at how EPD (environmental product declaration) provides a clear view of sustainable impacts for material choice and investigate how wide spread is standardization of dissemination of material source & energy consumption.
