The carbon dating game

July 1, 2008 | Bruce N. Wright

We’ve heard much lately about the carbon emissions battle the world is fighting on behalf of future generations. The challenge, of course, is to help nations reduce their greenhouse gas production and thereby try to reduce global warming. This flurry of activity is, in part, the result of the Kyoto Protocol on global environment, which went into effect 1 January. Already there are reports that big businesses and government groups are trading carbon shares on a sort of carbon stock exchange. This is good. However, many fear that some corporations or even governments are just trading ideologies without actually reducing greenhouse gases.

As part of this international discussion, the building industries are being targeted as major polluters, producers of significantly higher amounts of greenhouse gases emitted by the manufacturers of cement, steel and aluminum, the heaviest pollutors.* We all need to be educated on this significant trend.

Fabric is inherently low on the scale when it comes to energy consumption. First because it takes less energy to manufacture the material and less mass is produced. Second, because there is tremendous energy savings in the transportation of fabric to a job site for the same reason. Third, when fabric’s translucency is factored in, buildings that incorporate fabric roofs require less operating cost (i.e., energy) because less lighting is required during daylight hours. For these and other reasons, fabric is quickly becoming a viable alternative to more traditional building materials when it comes to carbon footprint accounting. But more architects and landscape architects need to be educated about these concepts, which brings me to the subject of this issue.

This is our “Back to school” issue, with examples from around the world of innovative educational training in fabric structure design. We’ve assembled a list of schools (and a handful of profiles of educators) that offer, either on a rotating or recurring basis, instruction in tension structure design. It is not a definitive list, just a start. And for that reason, we ask the kind reader to help us fill in any blanks with information from their region.

In addition to listed schools and teachers, there are numerous conferences, workshops and seminars that are tremendously informative, and we regularly post these in our news section called “Samples” (pg. 6.) And every issue has a continuing ed article.

Here’s your summer reading assignment: find a course near you, and sign up. You might learn something, and the world will be a greener place because of you.

* Fred Pearce, “Dirty, sexy money,” New Scientist, April 19, 2008, pg. 38.

Comments

There are not yet any comments.
You can submit a comment using the form below.