The latest instalment of our series of AR Reading Lists: seven carefully chosen pieces from our archive, free for registered users
Concrete is harmful to the environment both during production and in the impermeable permanence it leaves behind. The quarrying, transporting, crushing and burning of raw materials contributes to 8% of global CO2 emissions. The articles in this week’s Reading List explore the potential of straw, earth, stone, wood and bamboo as viable alternatives in the construction industry, proposing a future where buildings are bio-based, and more explicitly connected to the earth they sit upon.
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The short straw: bio-based construction, AR June 2022, Dominique Gauzin-Müller
‘Although straw is readily available – and a carbon sink – the use of concrete, steel, polystyrene and mineral wool still predominates in France, due to the power of lobbies and well-established practices'
Inhabiting the earth: a new history of raw earth architecture, AR February 2020, Jean Dethier
‘While an essential civic and ethical duty to fight against the climate crisis is belatedly being adopted in new architecture, raw earth offers architects the potential for action’
Stone age: a new architecture from an old material, AR April 2022, Steve Webb
‘Stone is a new material in our technological context. It is a new material in search of a language’
Out of the woodwork: apartment building in Paris, France by Mars Architectes, AR October 2021, Justinien Tribillon
‘The most basic rule of sustainable forestry is that a tree cut for use as lumber has to be replaced’
Retrospective: Yasmeen Lari, AR September 2019, Shanaz Ramzi
‘Over the years, Lari’s experience of working in mud, lime and bamboo in disaster areas has enabled her to hone her skills to an art form.’
Wood stock: the many lives of lumber, AR June 2021, Erin Putalik and Jane Mah Hutton
‘According to this framing, not cutting wood was wasteful, and discouraged the forest from reaching its productive potential – slow growth was waste’
AR Ecologies: building with trees, AR November 2021, Sabrina Syed
The third episode of AR Ecologies explores the tree as a material and the building block of our architectures
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