 Thank you very much for the invitation speaking here Even I have to say that will not be the easiest talk But we can put this in perspective right and and see and see what is this so I Yeah, I I named that thing building from waste and that is a very straightforward Narrative story that that I would like to tell you and that is an engagement that since almost four years right now At that time living and working in Singapore in an island state That we were approached by the Singaporean government At that time working at the so-called future cities laboratory in Singapore to think about the idea of of Not using waste anymore to be wasted meaning in the case of Singapore to be burned incinerated and then The remains being used to build new islands around the island of Singapore But actually making it a positive connotation to waste and seeing potential or starting a research of seeing a potentials how to make Waste maybe a future building material with all the problematic issues that that were mentioned before so The reason also why we thought then not only the the Singaporean government, but also why we thought That as architects we should start to think about alternatives And I think we we we heard this this morning how one single Construction material being it reinforced concrete became the dominant material worldwide We talk right now about the concrete conundrum And and the EPF and Losan made calculations if they're right or wrong doesn't matter But that every man-made object or more than 50% of all man-made objects today in one or the other way are somehow constructed out of cement so this this led us to To us architects to a kind of a stage where I don't know a lot of you are teachers especially at the Etihad Zurich It became a material that was associated also with a certain architectural style The idea to celebrate concrete and making the perfect surface out of it became art in itself and nobody Questions anymore if that is actually the way we should go and if that is the only possibility that we have to construct our environment I would like to show you a small calculation that is actually done by a Vana Sobek a professor at University of Stuttgart, and he made a very very small Calculation that he calls the equator wall and basically he says that and I don't want to go in detail But basically you can you can imagine that 125 million people reach every year the age of 16 And the age of 16 is usually a time in our lives where we start to consume Ourselves on infrastructure where we move out of our parents house where we rent our own house We buy a car we drive on streets on infrastructure And that is a certain age where all of a sudden these 125 million people every year start to consume on our resources as we do right now as well so just looking at the case of Germany and then looking at the post war Germany he calculates that If every one of those 125 million people would consume as much as concrete Reinforced concrete as the German or average German citizen after the world war that that he calculates would be an equivalent to 270 ton per person per year or 13.5 billion cubic meters per year I mean that is a number you can read it's a yeah That's a lot or not and therefore he came up with that image of the equator wall So he said if we put that amount of concrete in a wall, which is 30 centimeters wide and put that once around the equator of 40,000 kilometers How do you think how high that wall would be? so I'll give you a couple of seconds to think about that and What he came up with is that that wall that we have to build Every year would be 1.1 to 5 kilometers every year if if all of those young people would consume as much as Concrete as much concrete as as a typical German citizen did after the world war I'm showing that because that shows us that the way we are going the status quo Cannot be continued. We neither have the ability in terms of embodied energy I mean we don't have to talk about cement and the image energy But we simply don't have the resources for that our world does not provide enough material in an earth crust And I'm talking here about sand for example Maybe you heard the story of sand wars that the resource of sand comes to an end We don't have that anymore to build such an incredible Mass or volume in the same way as we did So the research question that we put forward is a very very simple one if if we If we went the wrong way if we kind of trusted in a singularity of Reinforced concrete what are our alternatives and are we architects part of that question? So do we architect say well that's part of material science? That's part of engineering that is not what I'm interested in or do we actually take an active role in the driver seat of this discussion and discuss Possibilities what that could be So in that situation where we were in Singapore I will present to you what I call three now paradigm shift The first paradigm shift that we were interested in is that waste could be a resource and To quote Michael Mitchell Joachim Say that the future city makes no distinction anymore between waste and supply So implementing a kind of a circular thinking that that the city that we have the materials that we took out of our earth crust Already in a in the age maybe from this morning's talk I would add that maybe we are or we were in the age of mining our world and maybe That that the materials we have should be considered In a and continuum and not anymore being wasted or even declared as waste I think these are two different models of the circular Metables so not any more the linear economy that we're trying to follow But the kind of a circular economy that also Michael of course is contributing a lot so they are two different Metabolisms that we can talk about and Also Michael in the work of great little great love course talks about the two different ideas In terms of a nutrient so one being a natural biological nutrient The other one being a technical nudging of course when you start looking at this possibility That's actually when you saw the work of of of David's and a covative That all of a sudden new thinking for example growing or cultivating your own building material Is playing in the role of this metabolism or this kind of creating a nutrient? in in the biological sense and of course now looking at at the markets and what is around today You find a lot of materials for example this one being a material insulation material called Ultra touch denim its insulation material made out of all genes But when you're looking close to this it sounds perfect in the end But of course again when you're understanding that the the color or the indigo being used to color the genes All of that again kind of you not only recycling the organic fiber of the cotton fiber But you recycle with it everything that was of course with it to produce the genes beforehand Other products here first time in decaf tiles being produced in Spain these designers take The the remains of coffee and produce tiles out of them. They call them even decaf tiles You can get them into variations one way where they simply press them into a new form They smell like coffee. I mean when you buy them unpack them. You have the erosion of of a of a coffee place And they can also get them sealed with with water glass, but you can use them again in the bathroom To to make sure that don't decay while used in the building another one is is a very kind of Yeah, it's a growing market right now mostly in Africa It is technology coming out of Europe or France and from Germany Where straw waste so after harvesting the grain the remains Are actually straw and then this company started to take the straw and pressing panels out of it So similar to a gypsum board panel you use the straw and you press it with a hot press into shape And by embody more energy to it to this to this organic material You activate the sugars in the natural straw home and the sugars are starting to glue together to a certain degree this this material It is a fantastic material because you can you can deal with it almost like a wood you can drill it you can cut it It has a great thermal insulation quality You also it is fireproof because of its density and you see here for example a project that we did in the Ethiopia Because Ethiopia has an incredible amount of that straw that is usually burned on the fields and here the hypothesis And I come back to that later on the hypothesis This was that we can use this organic material for a certain moment of a certain a certain period of time Not to be burned or becoming Biological nutrient, but we take that material out of that Metabolistic thinking for a certain time that create architecture a building out of that and after its use It comes back into this into this loop. So you see here students. They build a two-story house We use cladding materials that were available in a thing It is it is a true story because we are interested always in the most difficult part is the ceiling panels that that have to have a certain quality in terms of construction and then we built a whole series of these houses in Ethiopia this one being called Segu the The sustainable emerging city unit for other Zababa being built out of this straw material the second circle Which is a technical circle. So basically materials which don't fall in the idea of being or Organically grown or kind of biological harvested But are in the terminology of greater the greater being being technical nutrients is a little difficult or way more difficult to deal with them And I come back later on why it is so difficult right now As architects to to look at these materials and to work with them one is an example Of a company in Finland they produce stickers and they did not know for the longest time What to do with the remains of these sticker production? They have a lot of wax on them They have a little paper on them and they came up with the idea producing architectural or structural building elements and invited Shikiguban to design with their elements in this case here in in my land for the for the arts fair and Pavilion completely being built out of the waste material of their own production by now You can you can buy these products? I just showed you in every shape and every and every length And they made basically a second Economical model out of it by not only producing stickers, but by now equally being successful Using their waste product to make these these building materials the question at hand is of course Is this a new idea or is this is this even a thinkable way? Is this is this not a downgrading of the original material and do we simply extend the this the one-way road? Or is this a way that we can think in the future of of harvesting? our resources from the waste stream Another product we saw this morning already the stone cycling from a company in Eidhofen, Netherlands They take basically the rubble from construction sites and they developed a way how to Make it not only a product in sense of a construction material, but they're also very interested in the aesthetics of it So basic producing new tiles and new building materials new stones by sorting out the rubble in colors for example and then reselling them to the construction market All of that we put together in a book which is called building from waste where we show all of these examples But also question at the same time How these materials could think or could be applied in this in this metabolistic thinking The second paradigm shift Of course is Not only seeing the the waste stream But now putting more intelligence to that and that I think puts us architects again in an active road Active role to see the building as a material storage for a certain time with the Ethiopian project I try to explain how that could be Usually when we think of Demolishing over when think of the end of a building. This is at least in Europe I don't know exactly here but in Europe the way how we demolish buildings and you can already see that this building is not Necessarily a material storage because to sort these materials now into different groups Is almost impossible and if not a large amount of time and money would be necessary to do so so the idea now is of course if we understand this the The building as a material resource It puts us in the design process already in the role to think not only of the Construction of the building but designing it in such a way that in the end of the lifetime We can take every material very easily out of it Recalling this building for disassembly So right now also be running studios at the Etihad Zurich where we test with our students If architects are able to do this whole thing So usually our design process ends in the moment the building is standing there and then people are moving in are happy or not Happy but that is usually the end of our engagement with the building and here We're testing if it makes sense that that we simulate Already an act that will happen maybe in 50 60 70 years and how helpful that would be to to understand This one as our design task as well in terms of disassembly We did a project here in New York City last year in the summer of 2015 Which was called the Zurich pavilion at the ideas city festival where we try to simulate that for for a moment of time So and again we can question the material that is a is a material a waste stream material Which is tetrapuck you know that in Europe and I guess also here in North America We have highly sophisticated systems to recycle tetrapucks so to put tetrapucks again in their three materials Which is aluminum foil aluminum paper and wax But in the rest of our world these high-tech machines are not available So basically here is an example from India where where Indian people got very invasive inventive with these with this material by shreddering it and then producing tiles or roof tiles out of it That that's basically are completely waterproof They're rather light and the huge benefit of them is because of the aluminum foil is still being in the material That a lot of radiation that is usually hitting a metal Element is reflected again to atmosphere and it became a rather successful material to replace the old metal sheets with these tetrapuck recycled roof tiles in in the event of the Zurich Pavilion we We took this idea and we found actually or yeah, not funny, but interesting enough There's a company here in in the US That is doing the same thing and they are also collecting I hope you see this here. They are also collecting these tetrapucks And they press panels out of them and the idea of these panels is to replace gypsum boards And you see here the manufacturer of of these cartons juice and milk cartons Shreddering and then you put them into a hot press you add more embodied energy to it and you get basically these These rather thin. They are 1.5 or 15 millimeter thick panels and together with filler block From the Atheon Zurich We came up with a way how to use this material which in the end does not fulfill any of our Standards in terms of stability and compression strength or whatever But the designing or putting design into the into the main realm We're able to to take this rather weak material in a vaulting structure You see here that that we cut these peas In with a mill and then brought them to the side here at 1st Avenue and 1st Street We rented this this shop for for two weeks and you see here we built these triangle shaped elements that that then were Pre-fabricated in that shop and then just brought over to the side. It's just across the street You see that brought over And then by by finding the right shape or designing the right shape as a vault and then putting a pre-stress element through this vault Actually, we saw that this morning with Sheila with the with a table that you designed that is the same technique So you see here the the ropes hanging And then putting these elements up and putting the rope through we were able to have that That vault or this kind of event space Put up in in two days, which was there for I think 10 days or eight days on the site So what we test or what the agreement was with that with every company that we worked with here in this project Is that they take their material after use back into their regular system? so after the After the construction was done You see here how they're put together and then put in in place We had to make it watertight as well So the so the idea of these of these shindles were one overlapping the other and you see also that the The stance that they were standing on we also just rented out these pallets these shipping pallets from a company Actually in the end they gave it for free to us So so here images of this of the structure And in use and so it took us then half a day to take basically the whole building apart So the disassembly happened exactly I think at lunchtime There was the fat the last event in a two o'clock in the afternoon We started to take the building down And everything as I said went back to the production place where they again shredded the material of the tetraparks and then produced their Usual panels out of it again the truck came to pick up the the shipping boards again and actually we Left the site with just having the idea that the building was a temporary Detour of a regular process or management of materials And then testing that in the building of course the next step the third paradigm shift is now how the city as such Can function then remember the first thesis that the the city does not distinguish anymore between waste and resource That the city itself could become a resource There we working together right now with the the city of Zurich and we're doing a test building for the for the Emperor that's the federal Institute of material testing in Switzerland and they gave the commission to us to build a living laboratory Which is called urban mining with the idea that with that small test building in Zurich on their on their campus site We working together with the city and we heard this morning a lot of BIM and a lot of kind of these models that we usually have On the on the government or urban government that usually the the guard the city knows exactly where our buildings are They know how high they are they know how many people are living in there They even know by now the energy consumption, but they usually don't know which kind and how much Materials are stored within them. So here a rather large research project started right now Was together with Gerhard Schmidt from information architecture at the Etihad To come up with a new data system for the city of Zurich We're in the end the hypothesis would be that we as architects and engineers and builders Know exactly the resource already maybe 10 or 20 years ahead of when we want to build a new structure In our city and therefore could make them available to a larger market and make sure that that's the Hypothesis that the city itself becomes a resource Is also made Urban governance issue and not only a dream of architects and planets. Okay. Thank you very much Thank you David and thank you to the GSA PP for inviting me Yeah, my name is Andrew Dent. I run a library in New York City We source innovative materials from around the world to help our clients Just make better products and spaces. So my job is really just to talk to a lot of different Designers whether they be of buildings or cars or clothes and to help them think through their material challenges So given that I talked to an awful lot of people I thought as part of this presentation what I would do is I would go through some of the industries that we deal with and See how they deal with embodied energy when it comes to materials The reason I did this was because I think it'd be nice for you to see the way that different industries actually approach The material problem that they have And it's often very differently and their requirements are different I did decided to do it based upon embodied energy specifically rather than the overall sustainability or carbon footprint Because I think what was important to me was to understand The energy required to get the product or material to the to state The state before it's actually used so that for me is important And I actually as part of the presentation actually talk a little bit about the differences between that amount of energy And then the energy during during use So I chose a range of different industries obviously we've already dealt with architecture. That's you guys But the other ones I wanted to talk to go through and kind of get you to understand where they are with materials in terms of embodied energy So as I said the amount of energy it takes with their specifically for for their materials Hey Fashion clothing you'll wear it. It is a massive business Generally if one thinks about the materials when it comes to fashion they have a big problem Even though they can choose materials that perhaps have a lower embodied energy Typically if in terms of quantitative numbers it is better to use something like this which is wool or a linen that it will be Something like a nylon and in general what we find is that across the board when it comes to embodied energy of materials The more processed the higher the energy So if you've got a material which doesn't require that much processing often natural materials tend to be of that form And typically it has a lower embodied energy than something that requires a lot of synthetic processing Fashion is a great example of how Unfortunately, all of those challenges just go out the window because we wear what we want to wear and Unfortunately at the moment the speed at which the fashion is being consumed means that any attempts to try and Try and improve the overall embodied energy requirement of fashion just fails It's challenging to be part of the fashion industry to be part of you know, whether you are a you know luxury brand or or or a big Mass market brand any attempt you make is the chat the problem is It is very hard to go against the fact that you are making more and more materials And if we if we go back to Michael's presentation They need to adopt that sort of thinking because they're only ever going to get worse as the more the more successful they are There are some industries do a little bit better Nike's a good example of how the sportswear industry has really sort of reigned in some of its embodied energy Challenges with materials it now understands a lot more about the sorts of materials it uses it knows it can tell its designers Okay, you have a toolbox of materials that you should use and you can have trade-offs So if you want to use nylon which tends to be relatively high in embodied energy Therefore we're going to find a better manufacturing process to try and reduce other aspects when you're making that sneaker So there's a way in which they've assessed it and there's a little bit better control when it comes to sportswear and equipment consumer electronics Overall if you own a PC material was in is important. Does anyone still own a PC? Basically it's on a cell or death dust. Okay For you your materials are important because the amount of embodied energy within the materials to make the PC is Quite a large amount of the overall energy requirement of that product It's about 40 almost 50 percent some materials are important when you're making it because then Because the the use case where basically then it starts getting used that's only another 50 percent So improve your materials you get a very much better return on investment with a PC When you go down to something as small as a watch or let's let's say an iPad it becomes a lot less So materials become a lot less important in consumer electronics The smaller the size of the product to the point at which what matters more is actually its use So it's efficiency and use is more important than the materials that it's made of when I was talking to interior designers and understanding the embodied energy the materials they use it was interesting because there's almost a stark contrast between Natural or things like you know materials such as wood and and marble and those materials which are relatively unprocessed before they come to the interior and Synthetic materials such as acrylic sheet or those sorts of those sorts of things It's interesting that there's a very stark difference if you if you're basically assessing the embodied energy of materials and rain interiors Natural materials tend to be relatively low Synthetics tend to be a lot higher and that's that's really with interiors That was a very interesting find for me because I you know I always thought that it'd be a better use less material or Maybe a lighter weight material, but it seems as though that's actually more traditional Interior materials have a very much significantly lower embodied energy when it comes to interiors Automotive as an interesting change If you take an average Volkswagen Golf The amount of energy required to put that golf together all the embodied energy of the of the standard car is about 15% of its total energy if you use it then for a couple of hundred thousand miles Okay, 15% you take an electric car. Let's say the e-golf and suddenly goes up to 30% So your materials become more important becomes a larger component of the overall embodied energy of that car during its manufacture and use If you have to replace the battery which typically happens in our current batteries So when you go to say a hundred thousand miles to replace the battery, it then becomes 40 almost 50% So 50% of the overall embodied energy of an electric car is actually in the materials use So it becomes a very important aspect as to what materials you're going to choose when actually manufacturing that car But appliances as we've seen with energy efficiency process It's materials become relatively small as low as nine even five percent when it comes to an efficient fridge The material use is very is not particularly important. Energy uses is most important. So the efficiency mission running of the fridge So if you're choosing materials for a fridge, it's very important to not to compromise on the efficiency of the running of the fridge even if the material itself tends to be not necessarily as nice as or as as I guess as low carbon footprint as another material if it compromises efficiency You shouldn't put it in because what's the most important here is the run efficient running of that fridge Packaging it's all material material becomes the paramount the most important aspect When it comes to overall embodied energy because material is everything with packaging chances are you're only going to use it for a very short amount of time needs to get from the Factory to you and once you've used it. It's gone. So the use time is relatively small You make material becomes one of those important aspects Okay, so that's running through a few different those industries think of materials in differently than you do They're interested in materials for different reasons often. It's efficiency. Sometimes, you know, so sometimes it's a material aspect Sometimes it's an efficiency aspect Second part of my presentation. I kind of wanted to look at I talked to Dirk before This person and I was listening to the way he was talking about materials Waste materials and built and building with waste. I thought, okay, given that he's gonna be presenting on that I thought what I would do in response to his presentation is to give you an understanding about if you are going to choose specific Materials with the assumption that they're going to be reused What did you choose? Obviously Dirk gave some examples of what materials He is experimenting with but I kind of wanted to give you a little bit more scientific approach to the way You should think about materials if you are thinking about repeated use not just single single use and then perhaps Reuse but then multiple uses Okay, so the materials I basically went through all material categories So kind of hopefully give you an understanding of what materials if an ideal situation if you were to choose materials for your building Which ones would be best for actually continual reuse? Okay, and for each example, I've actually got a real material that actually has an interesting story This first one polymers of plastics This material itself is actually called poly floss as a company that will actually Take your old plastic. That's so you got your old plastic. So let's say the Okay, so plastic chair. Okay plastic chairs tend to be mostly plastic. Let's say a polypropylene That's something they've got more sort of glass fiber in them. The glass fiber is used to stiffen it It's essential to make sure that you minimize the amount of material So if you can I'm trying to recycle that product the problem is you've got glass fiber Plastic that don't really you know, so it becomes very very hard to recycle this company will put that chair in what is basically a candy floss machine Okay, oh, sorry cotton candy machine. So that's my British Americans a cotton candy machine with a heater He basically puts the chair in the cotton candy machine heats it up and spins it What happens is all the glass fiber and there's a around the outside there are holes So the cotton candy machine all the candy comes out of strings in this machine all the plastic comes out of strings But the glasses is reigned in the middle and they're actually done They set up actually in a location in a building that was being demolished And they were taking all of the plastic for them in the building and they were basically putting in this machine and ending up with this Material which we were then you weren't sure what to do with it It could be insulation, but it shows an interesting alternative use For a plastic for something that typically would be very hard to recycle so polymers The material in general you can recycle about five times unless you go through a chemical recycling So your average your coke bottle your your your your chair as you break it down in traditional recycling processes It only lasts about five times because you're the quality of the material reduces every time you chop it up You make it less strong. So polymers in general, I think of them the polymers use it in the Chetropack What can you use it? Recycle it once and a few more times then there's a point of which you then have to go through a complete Chemical process in order to do anything else with it. So polymers always have a bit of a challenge there So you want to use it a second time great You want to use a fifth time you start losing the performance you can only really use it as fill You can't use it as anything structural Metals we're always told that metals are infinitely recyclable. I gave the example of a spoon This spoon is actually from a company called peace bomb They are in Laos and what they do is they go round and they find out what they find all of the exploded ordinance that was dropped on the country I think during the 70s and 80s they pick it up and they melt it and they basically make it into trinkets and objects The reason why I think this is interesting apart from just that interesting story of Creative reuse is the problem is they do it themselves and they do it in relatively small casting processes And the products themselves aren't very good because with things like metals you have to be very careful with the chemistry You have to be very careful. It is possible to recycle metals repeatedly an infinite number of times But the problem the challenge is you have to be very careful It's not simply being done on a small scale You can't do it like the cotton the cotton candy machine you need to do it in a refinery You need to be very careful about chemistry to maintain that good quality. So we can so metals Yes, we can put that into a building as long as I can pull it out as a solid piece I can recycle it infinite number of times glass These are glass tiles made out of old cathode ray tubes Everyone knows what cathode ray tubes are right? We're all old enough to know what when televisions with this deep Okay, that's those materials of cathode ray tubes. You can recycle them You have to take out an awful lot of the nasty materials which include lead lead and that's something this company can do it They recycle them make it make glass tiles. Our challenge currently is that although we can take regular Good say glazing and we can recycle it into something like this As far as I know we have old castle in the room. Don't we? It was a representative of old castle here Okay, yes, um, I would love it if you can find a way we should we can recycle your current glazing into glazing again Because it seems like that's a big challenge with the buildings that we have though that glass comes down It's not mostly goes to landfill. I feel like it's still a challenge I would love to find some way in which that glazing could somehow end up as more glazing that to me Would be a great solve for buildings. That's one material that we're still having challenges with We've heard about concrete. This one's actually material called hemp Crete It's actually using hemp which they currently can't use in the US because we're not allowed to grow hemp at the moment They imported from Canada or from the UK for the idea of being it's an alternative to concrete But they simply just take hemp which is about to be stiff Fiber they've covered in lime and you end up with a building material which requires almost zero energy when it comes to When it comes to production very low embodied energy material Concrete I think is still a challenge. I think you know, I think don't mentioned, you know How about you know, how do we move beyond concrete? It's tough because it's easy, you know, it's it's a high-performance material It is effective. It can be poured almost anywhere So alternatives to concrete are still going to be a challenge, but I still I think we do have there are some Alternatives I'm not suggesting this is going to suddenly be the material It's used in all of the skyscrapers going up in New York City But I think we do definitely need to look at more lower and body energy alternatives Composites was also mentioned. Okay, the reason why I put this material up rather than a carbon fiber is because this has Not quite but almost as much strength as a carbon fiber So it's basically linen and the binder itself is a biobase binder So the concern about not being able to recycle composites those carbon fibers. Yes, I know that's a challenge There are some developments more recently that you can actually recycle composites But it requires a specific type of binder But the majority you can't this however, this has the opportunity to go into a biological nutrient So it has it is basically by it is biobased So rather than being a technical nutrient, which is typically what a composite would need to be because this is Is a biobase binder as well as as flax it has the potential to then become a Biological nutrient so therefore used again Not necessarily recycled specifically, but still within that process Seaweed I think for me this is interesting because When we talk about embodied energy and everyone talks about well, you know, we're currently using plastics Why can't we use bioplastics one of the biggest challenges? We have a plastic when we talk to our clients is that? a They in general they tend to have as big a carbon footprint or a bit bigger and body energy as regular plastics The other challenge is often the resources we use which is corn Tends to be from arable land and a lot of our clients don't want to use it because they're concerned Ikea is a good example. Ikea uses an awful lot of plastics They would love to use bioplastics, but they won't use corn because they don't ever want to be accused of taking food out of people's mouths Which is what the use of arable land would do So that's why I love algae or seaweed because it has the potential to be used to be grown and almost in an industrial process I think the future of a lot of our bio-based materials should be through industrial processing I think the the sort of traditional harvesting of materials the way we do I think that has challenges because we only have a certain number of Square acreage on the planet this algae can be actually produced and and and used whether it's for whether it's actually for Building planning as a photovoltaic adding into plastics that sort of thing It can be made in large stainless steel vats in the Nevada desert. It doesn't need arable land to do so Lignin is always an interesting one of all the cellulose that we make out of trees So think about the the other material that's left after you've made paper Out of out of wood is lignin. It's a pulpy material. It can actually be manufactured into plastics So it's an excellent alternative use for that waste material And I'd like to do is I'd like to leave you with one example and I know I think You know we heard this morning from even about About the ecovated material and I think the reason why that resonates for us so much and certainly for me is that when we talk about embodied energy That material the mushroom material. It's not just that it's a natural material Not just that it has performance of properties that have the potential to get up there with as an alternative to styrofoam It's that in terms of embodied energy Virtually zero you just let nature do what it wants to do. I think that's what's so exciting about it It's using nature rather than taking nature and then synthesizing it as I said with a buck bioplastics often uses much carbon It's regular plastic because you have to work them the what I love about the mushroom material is that it's you using Letting nature just basically go its normal path So I think that for me is very inspiring very exciting and using biological processes the way they want to be used Not fighting against nature but working with it I think that is the way we need to think about our approach to biological materials is when you think okay How is nature moving forward? We need to follow that up because fighting against it is that's going to give us a greater embodied energy when it comes to synthesizing it and making something useful This is the one I'm gonna leave you with because not always does the idea of you letting nature take its own route They're a successful one. This is a guy. There's a guy in the UK who had a great idea of manufacturing wood chairs out of Wood but basically having them grow. So what this is is this is a frame around which so he has a tree Which grows and he has a frame and he basically bends the wood around to basically eventually come into the shape of a tree Of a chair the idea being that you've just grown a chair great idea Great idea because again, it's using it's letting me to use its natural processes It takes time, but you have enough of them eventually under with with a great chair This is what he hoped it to be Nice chair nice thick, you know very stable. This is where he's at at the moment. I Love his energy. I love that he's doing this but nature doesn't always want to do exactly what you what you want to do I think I want to leave you with that because we still have a lot of work to do when following nature and using its processes But I think this is a good example of like we're getting there. It's just we're not quite there yet So thank you You talked about concrete You talked about how we need to move to an alternative to concrete is there in it shows me excellent example is there Is there yet a viable alternative to concrete? Is that or what would that what do you see that material be? Yeah, I think there there are a couple of Alternatives to concrete that it is just a question of what is our standard and what what do you want this architects? And how do we design? I mean for the longest time and Was an architect to school. I mean the the process we designed then or even today is that we usually come up with a design a form and Only in the very very end we asked ourselves. So what is the material? I'm going to realize this with and funny enough in 98% of the cases the answer is concrete So it became almost a kind of a paradigm for us that we say yeah We don't even think about anymore. What is what does the use? Sorry, what is the what is the material that kind of guarantees us the use of that building? And therefore when we reverse this right and when we start looking and very much a day We talked about location and the context and we look at that and first look at our palette that is available I think all of a sudden our designs become informed by the possibility of the material that we have and not what we would Like it to be And therefore I think that is that is that is in our hands, right? We don't need anyone else there's a question of design and what I like about that is that that that all of a sudden puts us Architects in a very important role again, right? So that we that we can that is that is our domain we are experts in design and Therefore making that part of our of our of our daily work again That is where the alternative to concrete starts to to become very very important and very very Let's say for me at least very pleasurable to work with and to think about I mean that's that's a great example because I work with clients not not necessarily architects but people make products every day and We're continually telling them that that if you just design and then choose a material afterwards You'll end up with a similar product often with some of the challenges You know the same challenges you have before if you think of the material first or at least at the same time as you're coming up With the with the concept completely changes the way of thinking about about yeah, so the if you can Just because concrete has been used doesn't necessarily so that's the way that the buildings have ended up looking like yeah If you choose a different material, maybe they look different just because so you see that also in Let's say the design of a bike Racing bikes when they first use carbon fiber They tended to follow the same way that they'd be manufactured using steel So the first ones tend to be like quite quite blocky now you see them They're using carbon fiber in the way it likes to be used which is smooth curves So yes often often a change in material requires a change in thinking to think about you know What does the material want to do and how does it best before? And I think a lot of that knowledge actually was around for the longest times right but but because of Forest mentioned that last hundred or hundred and twenty years of the read kind of invention of the reinforced concrete We somehow forgot how these things work together and and to come back to what Michael said. I mean We also do a lot of research for example in an earth architecture and earth and building and Funny enough the question of climate in these buildings is not an issue right because the material itself or the construction Material the way how you construct with that material is taking care of a lot of other questions That we only built in to our designs with the wrong choice of materials So for me right now working on these alternatives and we do a lot in different fields This morning was also mentioned bacteria We are very much interested in bacteria as a new as a new kind of adhesive What you just mentioned as a resin or biologically resin. I think there are also other possibilities of making Making natural processes very productive for the idea of of architectural construction and that at least make my heart to beat a bit faster and Coming up with new ideas even so if we don't succeed right? I think a lot of failure is in this in this research but As she meant the morning you sometimes you just throw things out and the most important thing is the boomerang coming back and And the learning that you got from that and maybe you only solve it in whatever 25 years or never But at least there is there is a passion behind it We talk about embodied energy. I think also our energy is important in our profession and how we deal with these questions. I Got one more question Okay, so I love the idea that you can have within a city Buildings as storage. Okay, so do you see that as something that is? You know could it is it going to is it going to be government driven or is it going to be free market driven? Do you see that as basically just a free trade of materials between buildings? Or do you think it's something needs to be organized by the government in order to make sure that there's a fair fair trade and that's Regulations are are kept up. Do you see like have you thought through what's a little more Yeah, we discussed a lot with that also with the city because See that there's a very simple a very simple thing in the end is the data available to everybody or only to a certain group of people So let's say from now on you know in 20 30 years We know exactly how much material is in which building and which side and stuff like that Let's say it's a given so who who owns this knowledge, right? That is that is the crucial question. So do you make that as a public domain? Is there something that you and I can share right? You have a library and you say well if you want to have more of this material You can go to site X and you know in three years They are going to demolish the building and you can bid for this material Maybe you get the stuff that that would be the way how we would like to see it We also work together with a group in Brussels called to go to a and and they are already doing that right now But but they are missing exactly this information So what they do is usually they get knowledge that a building is demolished and then they move in before the Big machines come and they take everything out that is for them sourceable right and put it into either a storage But that is the smallest time, but they start to selling off already on the site So they invite other people to come and bid for the material on site So they don't have to even store it But but it is in the kind of material flow and not anymore as a as a as a myth of where these materials are And where they are stored and where they are gone so to answer your question again I think that is decided by by in the end by a political decision, right? Is this a data set that is? Available to everybody or only to a certain group of people I hope for the first of course Waste is a good one because you know we do run into Difficulties when trying to organize new systems. There's a lot of you know reluctance There's a lot of economic difficulty and so forth and that is the fundamental difficulty with the two different cycles You know how to actually implement them how to actually make that move from theory to practice But I suppose that some of the work that we've seen like coming out of London I'm thinking about the kind of itinerant machines of swine studio and others suggest that the kind of DIY Manufacturing of materials which is sort of very personal could be done with portable machines So that individuals could harvest plastic directly or harvest aluminum or whatever it might be Smelt it down or extrude it into filament for making 3d print So I think that it's not necessarily at the scale of the governmental There may be a way in which individuals could also intervene in waste streams Yeah, I agree, but therefore it is also necessary that That we have to change the way how we think about materials. I'm Lately, I don't know if you know this example I hear a lot about the possibility to turn a PET bottle into a sweater The problem is a PET bottle was never designed or the chemicals putting in there was never designed that you put this on your skin So there must be either that every material that on a personal level we we kind of make a resource again is Completely sure that there's nothing in there that could harm our environment our plants or our human beings That's one possibility or we make sure that the materials that we Reharvest and never change their purpose So whatever was designed as a certain product should stay in that line of products and not all of a sudden becoming clothing For for infant or for for human being I think that is the difficulty that there's still a lot of work has to be done Here again, of course, I would like and therefore I follow Michael completely And therefore we need also the help of maybe chemists to come up with a range of material that we can say in the future You know, it doesn't matter if I make a bottle out of it or a sweater, right? Because the material, you know Allows for that that would be the perfect world, but unfortunately there we are still quite some mileage to go This is regarding the decaf tiles the The stroller and a certain other Belt grade and a similar materials what what should change from The usual practice today for these things to become mainstream and construction. Thank you Actually it doesn't you see the thing is that these these products I showed today are commercial available, right? So if you would like to use for example the decaf tile you simply order them that's that's possible For me it becomes interesting on now. I guess you're an architect or designer It becomes questionable for us. How do you use that tile? I guess the moment you put a regular motor right on on that tile and put it onto the wall You could also have bought any other tile Because again you create a system that is not being ready for disassembly after the use of that tile Again, it needs us designers now to come up with a with a system a construction system That allows me or you in 10 or 15 years to go into your bathroom and taking that tile And it is still in the same state as we put it in So the product the material is not enough it needs behind that needs a whole logic of thinking of Constructing what we call building for disassembly to make sure also that that the taking out and maybe recycling Whatever you would like to do is actually possible and I think that is a large field for us architects to think and innovate What is your strategy to go back into? Components instead of materials Because when when you have a mobile phone for example the real material value is less than two dollars Basically, but if you could recapture components actually then you could come up up to 60 or 70 percent of the Value of the product basically with that. So what do you have a strategy for that? And what we are trying right now is to actually hook up with the industry to think architecture not as we usually do as Putting materials to the construction site and then putting each material up on on the site as is But I think also for the future we have to think a lot in pre manufacturing So why don't we think in components or we call them modules that for example? We are planning right now a hundred and forty a social housing components for a for a social Housing company in Zurich and for them. It's important that when family Shifts happen. So right now how they build this or that in the case we're investigating is these social flats We're built a hundred years ago and in Zurich, you know the building stock is rather long long term in these hundred years The social structure of the family completely changed So what they would need right now would be apartment sizes between three four and five room apartments a hundred years ago They built one two and three room apartments So they would be interested right now when they build or replace the buildings themselves that this is based on a modular system On a component system that they could say very easily for them They could change the building also during the hundred year lifespan In a matter of days to accommodate for different social structures of their family plus They are also interested because usually they don't only have one site in the city They have several sites to move components and modules across the city with different ideas and also in Singapore right now That is a new way to go the government right now in Singapore is aiming to build 80 story High buildings out of modules of prefab modules that then after 10 years 15 years can be Relocated and reshifted in the city. So I think the thinking goes there So not only material but larger elements that that are flexible enough for future change The ultimate in recycling of concrete is the Reconstruction of interstate 80 Which in I drove in? 1990 which was completely torn up the concrete was reused and then replaced So one wonders 25 years later, are they doing it again? Yeah, that's that's actually true that's that's a sad story of concrete that when you recycle concrete usually the the material characteristics change so the compressive strength of recycled or partially recycled concrete is usually not as high as a as a In a new mix and therefore funny enough the only use so far for for recycled concrete is in in Infrastructure project projects where you put it actually as a base for for new construction There is a large research right now I know in France and in Switzerland that they came up with an idea of Using the recycled concrete To they claim even had they having better material characteristics than the original one But that requires again and we come to a lot of chemistry that is going in there So in the end you have a product But maybe fulfills highest standards in terms of compression strength But then becomes a time bomb when you think of the the second third and fourth recycling process that you're putting in there so therefore for me We talked about Composites in the end Concrete is also a composite and therefore we should maybe shift our thinking a little bit away from these from these composites I think we're almost ready to wrap up, but I did want to Just note that I think it was interesting that you know as we're Wrapping up these panels and getting ready for the keynote that it's I think fitting for you Dirk to look for opportunities for us to return to design And opportunities for design and the kind of strengths and expertise of designers and along those lines I just had one thought and then and then a question for you Andrew, which is You know it's sometimes said that a clever move for an architect is to tell their client a story The client would want to repeat You know to their friends about the project when the architect isn't around in other words you kind of you can't be too Complicated you can't win them over with things that they wouldn't be able to you know digest and get behind themselves and tell the story of themselves I'm wondering if you have any Any stories that you know that you tell your clients from from any industry really that really resonate with them that that is something that they You know want want to tell back that they understand because I I think when we're you know combining this idea of Metrics and stories, you know, even if our secret goal is the is the metrics We need people to get behind the stories, right? So I wonder if you have any example to that. Yes. I mean I think Whether it's a automotive whether it's it's fashion, but whichever industry it is I think the stories are key and the stories I think are They need to have two aspects. I think they need to have an aspect of Sort of inside a knowledge I think you know if you can you know if there's a material that only you can use or material that has a specific Prior use that has great value. I think the second thing is People do also love to think that they love to love the idea of sustainability so often we found that one of the most effective ways to get people on board with Reducing their environmental impact is to actually have an interesting story behind it. The numbers will never actually give you Some you will never actually get someone to to to really want to own it So although we always have to go through the metrics to make sure that the the material solution is going to be A lower lower impact one often the only way we can get into actually go on board It's to actually tell them story about how they're actually going to be improving the world in some way So, you know, it's a relatively simple thing And that I think we all you know, we all like to feel like we're doing a small a small part I think those the sustainability stories need to be ones in which I think Resonate on a more personal level the reason why what I say about that is When it comes to sustainability, it's amazing how Ineffective telling you turning someone that they're going to save the planet is compared to they're going to make the room in In a bait in a child make a child's room cleaner. There is a resonance there, which is much more Sort of close to home and it's effective. So whenever talking about sustainability We tend to avoid the large for metrics that you're going to save the planet because that becomes something just Not understandable if you can get you can bring it down to something where someone says, okay I will be able to make sure that this baby's life will be healthier That is is always effective people will pay more for that and will work harder for that when they would for Unfortunately saving the planet Great. Well, thank you both