Sustainability expert William McDonough warns of over-focusing on carbon neutrality
Architects are creating “killing machines” by not considering the toxicity of the materials used in buildings, America’s leading sustainability expert William McDonough said this week.
Speaking to BD on Tuesday at the ParkCity conference in London, organised by Cabe and Natural England, architect and author McDonough said the emphasis on reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions was skewing the sustainable agenda.
“I’m amazed there’s so much focus on carbon, yet [architects are still] using toxic materials,” he said. “It’s a nightmare — you’re effectively delivering a killing machine. We have to put as much focus on materials as on energy.”
His practice, William McDonough & Partners, has worked on UK projects including the unbuilt National Science Museum in Swindon, and a conceptual design for a new town in Rugby.
And he featured in Vanity Fair’s 2008 power-ranking top 100, alongside figures such as Vladimir Putin and Rupert Murdoch.
His comments were hailed by some British experts but greeted with caution by the UK Green Building Council.
Michael Pawlyn, who worked on the Eden Project while at Grimshaw and is now principal at Exploration Architecture, said: “There is a danger we could get too carbon-focused. We need to move to a closed-loop model, and that’s not necessarily the lowest carbon model. It’s a daunting challenge, it sounds major alarm bells with the coatings industry — paint and PVC are almost inevitably going to end up as pollution.”
Technical director of BRE Global Alan Yates agreed. “Carbon neutrality has come to the fore because of government initiatives and protocols from the EU,” he said. “You need to take account of the other issues, and toxicity should be an integral part of that.”
David Strong, chief executive of sustainability consultancy Inbuilt and the former managing director of BRE Environment, said the comments echoed what he had been saying for a decade.
“It’s great someone as high profile as Bill McDonough has raised this issue, but this is about more than about just carbon and materials,” he said. “Buildings can be zero-carbon but fraught with other problems. It’s the law of unintended consequences — if the air quality in a school is so bad, because it’s so airtight, that all the kids are falling asleep, that’s not a sustainable outcome.”
But the UK Green Building Council warned the importance of cutting carbon could not be underestimated.
A spokesman said: “Climate change is the priority. We should be very wary of taking our eye off the zero-carbon ball — it’s a global climate emergency.”
The UKGBC has also dismissed calls by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors last week for the government to revise its target to make all new homes zero-carbon by 2016.
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