how architecture can save the world from global climate change

architectural suggestions on strategic use of greenhouse gas sequestering materials that antagonist atmospheric C[O2] in the context of a boreal biome

Tommy Vince

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9789179698706
• eBook ISBN: 9789180073554
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunst Allgemein

Is finding your house sinking into the ground the next big thing within sustainable architecture? Well, if you find the arguments of this project strong enough, it might actually be a common sight in the near future. The field of architecture needs to respond to the IPCC's call for action for methods of C[O2] sequestration to help antagonize the developing global climate change. How architecture can save the world from global climate change is a bold project that responds to that call, proposing an architecture that both sequesters its embodied C[O2] mass and does so within a targeted time frame of a generation. Ultimately, gifting society and its protagonists with a possibility of producing a truthfully net positive [read C[O2] reductive] footprint. It succeeds in doing so by drawing knowledge from a local history of sinking Nordic timber log architecture and combining it with the theory of sequestration. Performed as projected, this pioneering project might just be the world's most sustainable architecture, ever designed.How architecture can save the world from global climate change is for anyone with an architectural fascination longing for a deeply illustrated and detailed read of sustainable architecture and Nordic timber log design. In a comprehensive way, it weaves architectural poetry together with hard data, science, construction details and ideological ambitions in a convincing argument for the benefit of society's bettered relationship to climate. In conclusion this book is more than just a coffe book blend of a scientific report, it is a piece of art, challenging the basic perception of what an architectural book can be."An intensely original and highly provocative MA Thesis, executed with care; supported by an amazing body of research with attention to detail and scientific accuracy. A mythic construction, full of poetic notions that allows others to rethink change."Amalia Katapodis, University Lecturer, UMA

II_II

sequestering architecture

a detailed unit in boreal context

“Today I can see no other desirable perspective for the future than some form of ecological way of life where architecture would return to the initial idea of functionalism derived from biology and would take root again in its cultural and regional substratum. We might call it ecological functionalism…

...you should take into account the nature of Materials, as well as the climate and its impact, and leave the whole to take care of itself.”

Glenn Murcutt, Australia

knowledge is in the detail

the result of compression on timber

The defining reason for focusing on timber log construction in the aspired project of sequestering architecture has, besides the local cultural context, to do with the performability of the structure in detail relating to the overall idea of sinking architecture. It is a purely architectural interest to purify the idea through the body of architecture to such an extent that every aspect communicates the thought of the architect. Where there is an ambition of sinking an architecture’s structure into the ground for a C[O₂] sequestering result, it speaks poetically when the details of that structure perform in harmony with that same idea. Timber log construction does precisely this and can therefore be said to have been made for this type project.

The technique of timber log construction has been understood and consciously applied over 1100 years of Swedish architectural history.⁷² The technique of crafting the wood in the way that the material compresses trä-i-trä [wood-on-wood], is a unique characteristic for the northern building tradition. In the simplest way, the crafting of the log materials creates an extremely resistant and durable construction. Just how it performs is entertainingly genius.

Upon harvest wood is moist from the water it has extracted from the ground. Post-harvest, wood begins the process of drying and aging, which, among other things, makes the material lighter, harder and smaller in volume. Due to the fiber structure, wood shrinks differently depending on its direction. Along the timber [longitude] the material shrinks less than 0.1 %, the circumferential [tangential] about 7.7 % and the radial [radial] by 4.0 %.⁷³ Due to the large per centage of movement in the tangential shrinking the crafting of a log, in the way described in the illustration, will over time develop a tight contact between the unital pieces of timber. The shrinking, acting by contraction creates a larger surface of contact, in combination with the force of compression acted upon by the total weight of the structure. This development over time gives way for the local saying that Nordic timber log buildings only become warmer and tighter the older they become. More appropriately this type of timber log construction only shrinks closer towards a C[O₂] sequestering state the older it gets.

The result allows for an agendal play of the project’s core focus from the smallest detail to the project as a whole. Details and solutions that coperform with the idea of sinking architecture towards a sequestering result is in the end nothing more than a retrieved building technique from the cultural and architectural context.

line drawing: tommy vince, compressed timber logs

autocad+adobe illustrator+adobe photoshop, 2019

section, scale 1:5 [297×297]

the effect of compression, drying and aging over time on a

timber log wall.

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⁷² A., Holmberg, August Holmbergs Byggnadslära, Stockholm, Sverige, Nordiska Museets Förlag, 2006, p.23-25

⁷³ M., Nylinder, H., Fryh, Timmer, Uppsala, Sverige, Wikströms Tryckeri AB, 2015, p.17

dalaknutens fagra skönhet

buildable combinative design

In order to propose an appropriate sequestering timber log construction, the history of the contextual knotting techniques has been explored. The construction techniques have evolved over close to 1100 years⁷⁴ with each detail communicating ideas and design choices of the hand which created them. From the first rännknut [gutter knot] to the more sophisticated biladmulti-haksknut [smooth multi-chin knot]. The evolution of timber log knotting can be summarized as; as time passed more resources were invested into solutions that created tighter, warmer, more comfortable and resilient structures. Nordic timber log construction is a pragmatic piece of architecture. Ornamentation and abstract details such as the clean knots without extensions appear solemnly on treasured buildings of greater wealth, where resources could be spent extravagantly. Thus, the oldest timber log constructions are the least labor intensive, with the best moisture management, read ventilation. The development of timber log design ultimately peaked when cross-referenced with its buildability, prioritizing the quality in craft and its repeatability rather than the technical innovation possible on paper or in small scale manufacturing.

To understand Nordic timber log construction, one must study [1] the behavior of wood over time and [2] under the force of compression, how traditional knotting techniques [3] handle moisture⁷⁵ and [4] air tightness and [5] the relationship between labor and time as a valuable resource investment. Ultimately, crafting timber is about margins. The challenge is allowing an agile flexibility to address and correct these margins. After all it makes total sense since the resource of wood is anything but precise.

Explorations for a perfect timber log joint became a fruitless journey of innovation, concluded by wisdom and humble realization of understanding where to innovate, and where not to innovate. Every design choice taken comes at the expense of something else. Understood by even the best of timber log crafters.⁷⁶ Buildability, in the end, cannot be discarded, an otherwise all too familiar result when architects themselves lacking in building experience, dive into the task of timber log design. ⁷⁷ It is just one of those things where the craft is perfected best by crafting and not drawing. In the end, creating a comfortable space of timber logs comes down to the architect’s granting of margins and simplicity of design, concluded by the total buildability when combined with the craftsperson’s skill of manipulating the logs so that they join wood-onwood, log after log. Complexity is seen in the simplest design, while complication reveals itself in the over-designed. For some things have already been perfected hundreds o...

Table of contents

• About the book
• Dedication
• Table of content
• Forewords
• Theory of sequestration: Architecture’s climate impact
• Theory of sequestration: Towards an architecture
• Sequestering architecture: How architecture can contribute
• Sequestering architecture: A detailed unit in boreal context
• Sequestering architecture: Proposed collective in context
• Sequestering architecture: And the consequences it produces
• Proposals for the cosmopolitan: Fluid architecture : [re]assembled
• Proposals for the cosmopolitan: Versitile responsive architecture
• Proposals for the cosmopolitan: [Re]assembled cosmopolitanism
• A new rendered timeline: Projected past, present and future
• Further Reading: Acknowledgements & Bibliography
• Copyright