Leaders of the seven largest cities in Norway point out that construction sites produce 20% of society’s total carbon emissions. Albeit this exclusively represents emission from the construction work itself, it is a lot. However, according to professional standards, a building is expected to last for 60 years, serving various owners and purposes. This is the timespan during which the building accumulates its total life cycle cost (LCC). If this period had been included in the equation, the total emissions would be doubled, i.e. 40% of total emissions. In addition to this there would be the indirect emissions generated by the building. An approximate, though conservative, estimate of these emissions would be another 10%. Our built environment does in other words generate about 50% of our total emissions.

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Complicated and difficult to handle? Not necessarily, but it will require a change of focus from single object to complex system.

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COGNITION

Current cognitive science does not consider cognition to be an intracranial activity. Cognition is considered a direct interaction between brain and environment, like a field. As humans we shape our built environment through a complex cognitive work by which thought and agency form a continuum.

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In a management, operations, maintenance and development (MOM+D) perspective, on a timeline from cradle to cradle, the individual building component (brick, doorknob, concrete beam, water tube, electrical cable etc.) forms the basic level of interaction between user and building. The MOM+D system accumulates skills, knowledge and information through time. This competence migrates in time from buildings of the past to future buildings, through space from one building to its neighbours and on to its urban context. There is a learning loop embedded here, and a potential for re-use and circular economy which could reduce emissions and waste dramatically.

 

URBAN FABRIC

Conceived like this, building components form a field extending beyond the boundaries of the building and into the urban fabric. This field has urban dimensions. In time it extends back as far as the history of architecture, and as far into an unknown future as the human creativity and though can reach.

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This field of physical components embeds energy, materials, financial resources and human competence. The competence of the Roman stone masons lives on in the same field as the potential insights and knowledge still to be developed by future AEC industry. The warp thread of this fabric is cognition, and the trigger of a sustainable development is the connection between cognition and agency.

 

URBAN TRIGGER

Electrification of the construction site is the lowest hanging fruit in AEC. It is easy to give tax reductions to electrical machines and tax rises to the diesel engines. The lowest level is the most accessible and the most sellable. That is its strength, but also its weakness. The level of the individual machine or component has the lowest impact on emissions. It is also the level in which an intervention most easily backfires. Norway has become leading in its share of no emission cars. It has achieved this by giving massive tax reductions to electrical cars. One result of this is that 50% of the car fleet is electrical. Another result is that a 3 year old Tesla with a broken headlight and a bump in a door is demolished and replaced by a new car, because that is cheaper than repairing it.

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Interventions on an overall systemic level have large and structural impact. Such interventions, however, are more complicated to implement because they presuppose systems that cross the boundaries between objects and situations. This means that decisions and implementations involve different owners, budgets, authorities etc., which in its turn means that the intervention may disrupt different value chains. What does that mean? For example, that the expenses of an intervention may land with one agent, while the profit lands with another.

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Achieving real action and impact on this level, one therefore needs to rethink value chains and redesign supply systems. This may be complicated because it may imply the disruption of existing business models, institutions and regulations. Nevertheless, this is where we need to turn our attention in order to achieve a green shift on a basic, systemic level, where a real and lasting impact can be generated.

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The good news is that by doing this intelligently, rich yields can be reaped sustainably, without undermining our resources by turning from value production to value extraction.

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Urban Trigger Technologies develop deep technology that will provide the tools for doing this.

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