Episode 8: CarbonShack Design: What Connects Us
The biophilic designs are brought together across many of the CarbonShack finishes — fabrics, carved wood doors and furniture, tile and custom decorative grates — with an exploration of mycelium, the fungal threads that live under the forest floor, breaking down plant materials which they give to trees through their roots, in return for sugars the tree makes via photosynthesis, and creating a kind of wood wide web by enabling trees to communicate with one another to promote the health of the forest as a whole. Using the calculators the team developed for measuring embodied energy, they discover the amount of carbon dioxide they were able to save from being released into the atmosphere in building the CarbonShack.
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The construction industry uses three quarters of all the raw materials used by the United States, while buildings consume nearly 40% of energy in the country, more than both transportation and industrial sectors. Almost half of the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from buildings are due to materials production and the burning of fossil fuels. The process of construction creates a lot of waste, contributing between 30% and 40% of domestic landfill waste.
Inward Drive - Outward Drying