3 ms·

In addition to that, buildings should be made to last. Badly designed or built houses can be just ticking time-bombs for mold and other air-quality issues, and

In addition to that, buildings should be made to last. Badly designed or built houses can be just ticking time-bombs for mold and other air-quality issues, and certainly not sustainable.

rini17 6y ago
On the contrary, it is not possible to foresee kind of houses and places people will want to live in 50 years in the future. So,it makes much more sense to make it easy to tear down and rebuild houses-aiming for reusable (like brick) or biodegradable (like untreated wood) building materials.
- notahacker 6y ago
  > On the contrary, it is not possible to foresee kind of houses and places people will want to live in 50 years in the future. People have been doing it and usually getting it right for millenia. 38% of the UK's housing stock dates from before 1946; much more than was built in the last forty years. And one of the few really consistent objections to older buildings is 'the architects assumed nobody would still be living in it fifty years later'...
  - cm2187 6y ago
    Not sure on getting it right. Old houses in the UK are a nightmare in term of thermal and sound insulation (basically none). Sure, it protects your head from the rain (when it doesn’t leak). But in a discussion about consuming less energy, thery are pretty much a counter-example of what to do.
- em-bee 6y ago
  it is possible to build sustainable and to last, while at the same time be easy to tear down and reuse. one key seems to be to avoid concrete. broad.com, a company in china, has developed a lightweight, energyefficient, durable, and reusable way to build using steel. i am pretty sure there are others out there with other good alternatives
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  You can design buildings built to last and simultaneously reuse with little to zero waste far into the future. But it is much more expensive, because the current economic-political order favors externalizing tons of costs onto the environment and into the future. Example. Concrete foundations don't have to be slabs that are torn up when a new house is built on the lot with a different footprint. They're just cheaper that way. You can instead use a modular foundation if you are willing to pay for it and give up flexibility in foundation footprints. Design the modules using 800 MPa ultra-high strength pozzolanic concrete, pre-stressed basalt fiber reinforcement, and carbon fiber reinforcing filaments, with basalt ducts for carbon fiber post-tensioning cables to connect the modules together, all covered on the envelope with foamed glass insulation to protect from UV. A foundation system like this would have a lifecycle rated in multiple hundreds of years. Might have to replace the carbon fiber post-tensioning cables sooner than 100 years, but we're still figuring out the lifecycle of those; they're rated about the same as steel as far as we know from current lifecycle testing, possibly longer because they aren't subject to the corrosion concerns of steel, but no one knows for sure yet. You'd be able to repurpose these modules indefinitely. If foundations like these were commonplace in average residential and commercial buildings, breaking out the jackhammers to toss out a foundation would only be reserved for one-off projects where the compressive load far exceeds what these could take. Used for just your average residential projects, and they'd be fine from SFH up to mid-rise multifamily projects; I'd have to retain and pay structural and civil engineers to figure out what these could ultimately take. Such a foundation though, is fantastically expensive compared to how we currently build foundations. If you put a gun to my head to force a guess, I'd pluck an order of magnitude out of thin air. I wouldn't be surprised if it is acutally more. I can't even find someone who makes basalt post-tensioning ducts that are textured on the surface to simultaneously serve as reinforcing rods. I'd like to eventually see if carbon nanotube-based cables can be used for filaments and post-tensioning, possibly pre-tensioning, as carbon fiber manufacturing emits lots of CO2 while there are some interesting processes shown in the lab for making carbon nanotubes that consume CO2. Concrete and foundation companies wouldn't like it if their customer base shrunk to only bespoke foundation gigs for megascale projects and new customers needing new modular foundation modules. If common foundations were like this, we'd be used to thinking of foundations as some object we simply pass along for multiple generations, and re-purpose as modules across that entire timespan. The amount of concrete manufactured per year after the initial production of modules is satisfied would be alarming to many in the concrete and related industries (don't forget n-th order effects onto real estate and finance among others, for example). I don't even know if we have enough volcanic basalt to satisfy global demand.
- TomSwirly 6y ago
  I'm living in a seventy-year old building - maybe older. It's just lovely, I can't say enough good things about it. It has new windows and such, of focurse. Do it right in the first place and it will be livable forever. People are physical beings with well-known needs - warmth, protection from the elements, water and plumbing, privacy, comfort, sunlight, air, lack of health risks (fire, unsafe water, outgassing materials, damp, mold, etc). A good solution to this problem will be a good solution a century from now, with minor modifications. People should be less into ripping things up just because they get bored with them. Even if we reuse materials, the environmental cost of a new building is huge.
  - rini17 6y ago
    Do you think majority of people living in 70+ year old houses have such luck that it satisfies everything you write about? Considering people I know, I doubt it. The upkeep can require as big expenses (not just financial, also environmental) as tearing down and building anew.

In addition to that, buildings should be made to last. Badly designed or built houses can be just ticking time-bombs for mold and other air-quality issues, and certainly not sustainable.

rini17 6y ago

On the contrary, it is not possible to foresee kind of houses and places people will want to live in 50 years in the future. So,it makes much more sense to make it easy to tear down and rebuild houses-aiming for reusable (like brick) or biodegradable (like untreated wood) building materials.

notahacker 6y ago
> On the contrary, it is not possible to foresee kind of houses and places people will want to live in 50 years in the future. People have been doing it and usually getting it right for millenia. 38% of the UK's housing stock dates from before 1946; much more than was built in the last forty years. And one of the few really consistent objections to older buildings is 'the architects assumed nobody would still be living in it fifty years later'...
- cm2187 6y ago
  Not sure on getting it right. Old houses in the UK are a nightmare in term of thermal and sound insulation (basically none). Sure, it protects your head from the rain (when it doesn’t leak). But in a discussion about consuming less energy, thery are pretty much a counter-example of what to do.
em-bee 6y ago
it is possible to build sustainable and to last, while at the same time be easy to tear down and reuse. one key seems to be to avoid concrete. broad.com, a company in china, has developed a lightweight, energyefficient, durable, and reusable way to build using steel. i am pretty sure there are others out there with other good alternatives
yourapostasy 6y ago
You can design buildings built to last and simultaneously reuse with little to zero waste far into the future. But it is much more expensive, because the current economic-political order favors externalizing tons of costs onto the environment and into the future. Example. Concrete foundations don't have to be slabs that are torn up when a new house is built on the lot with a different footprint. They're just cheaper that way. You can instead use a modular foundation if you are willing to pay for it and give up flexibility in foundation footprints. Design the modules using 800 MPa ultra-high strength pozzolanic concrete, pre-stressed basalt fiber reinforcement, and carbon fiber reinforcing filaments, with basalt ducts for carbon fiber post-tensioning cables to connect the modules together, all covered on the envelope with foamed glass insulation to protect from UV. A foundation system like this would have a lifecycle rated in multiple hundreds of years. Might have to replace the carbon fiber post-tensioning cables sooner than 100 years, but we're still figuring out the lifecycle of those; they're rated about the same as steel as far as we know from current lifecycle testing, possibly longer because they aren't subject to the corrosion concerns of steel, but no one knows for sure yet. You'd be able to repurpose these modules indefinitely. If foundations like these were commonplace in average residential and commercial buildings, breaking out the jackhammers to toss out a foundation would only be reserved for one-off projects where the compressive load far exceeds what these could take. Used for just your average residential projects, and they'd be fine from SFH up to mid-rise multifamily projects; I'd have to retain and pay structural and civil engineers to figure out what these could ultimately take. Such a foundation though, is fantastically expensive compared to how we currently build foundations. If you put a gun to my head to force a guess, I'd pluck an order of magnitude out of thin air. I wouldn't be surprised if it is acutally more. I can't even find someone who makes basalt post-tensioning ducts that are textured on the surface to simultaneously serve as reinforcing rods. I'd like to eventually see if carbon nanotube-based cables can be used for filaments and post-tensioning, possibly pre-tensioning, as carbon fiber manufacturing emits lots of CO2 while there are some interesting processes shown in the lab for making carbon nanotubes that consume CO2. Concrete and foundation companies wouldn't like it if their customer base shrunk to only bespoke foundation gigs for megascale projects and new customers needing new modular foundation modules. If common foundations were like this, we'd be used to thinking of foundations as some object we simply pass along for multiple generations, and re-purpose as modules across that entire timespan. The amount of concrete manufactured per year after the initial production of modules is satisfied would be alarming to many in the concrete and related industries (don't forget n-th order effects onto real estate and finance among others, for example). I don't even know if we have enough volcanic basalt to satisfy global demand.
TomSwirly 6y ago
I'm living in a seventy-year old building - maybe older. It's just lovely, I can't say enough good things about it. It has new windows and such, of focurse. Do it right in the first place and it will be livable forever. People are physical beings with well-known needs - warmth, protection from the elements, water and plumbing, privacy, comfort, sunlight, air, lack of health risks (fire, unsafe water, outgassing materials, damp, mold, etc). A good solution to this problem will be a good solution a century from now, with minor modifications. People should be less into ripping things up just because they get bored with them. Even if we reuse materials, the environmental cost of a new building is huge.
- rini17 6y ago
  Do you think majority of people living in 70+ year old houses have such luck that it satisfies everything you write about? Considering people I know, I doubt it. The upkeep can require as big expenses (not just financial, also environmental) as tearing down and building anew.