Concrete, steel and glass buildings are ‘racist’ claims green professor https://t.co/j4C0S8RD7o
— Construction Enquirer (@ConstructionEnq) October 15, 2021
University of Bath Professor of Zero Carbon Design David Coley wants materials usage to become a moral issue with a complete rethink over common design elements including high levels of glazing and excessive use of steel and concrete. He argued that architects, contractors, planners and construction clients must consider building projects from a moral standpoint based on their lifetime carbon impact in a new essay titled Are buildings evil? Rethinking responsibility in the construction industry.It says buildings should be seen as “harmful emitters” and that given a disproportionate amount of this harm, in the form of rising sea levels and temperatures will fall on the non-white population of the global south, designing and constructing energy-intensive buildings “fuels global climate injustice and is therefore morally offensive, and potentially a form of unconscious institutional racism.”
Professor Coley said:
“We urgently need to rethink our approach to construction and adopt zero-energy practices. The largest proportion of our carbon emissions come from our buildings, not industry or transport, as is often assumed.“We know how to build, and have built, some exemplary low-energy buildings, so our failure to adopt them as the norm can be viewed as deliberate.“We need the public to demand zero-energy buildings, developers to set zero-energy briefs and architects to draw zero-energy buildings – and all because they find anything else unacceptable, even repulsive.”
