Helix-House 4: Sustainability

Building is responsible for about 8% of the CO2 emissions in the world, even growing, if fossiles burning is reduced by the rise of renewables. The making of cement produces CO² by the reduction of limestone and the heating to initiate the reduction. If  fossile fuels for heating are replaced by green H² , still the CO² from the reduction remains. In the best case this is clean enough to be used by other chemical processes. So we should get rid of the mass use of caementum which enabled for 2000 years wonderful architecture from the dome of the Pantheon to the Villa Savoye or even Ronchamps from Le Corbusier. 

Going back to the elder, naturally growing materials of as wood and materials made from it, is not necessarily a continuation of the architecture with concrete as dominant material. We should use the opportunity to reinvent as much as possible an architecture of wood  and wood composite materials, as https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holzbau indicates. A specific challenge for wood seems to bee the construction of high buildings as https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HoHo_Wien and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mj%C3%B8st%C3%A5rnet  Mjostarnet indicate. They demonstrate the technology of wood-concrete or wood alone to build high commercal buildings, but no new architecture. Another example of similiar, unspecific, hidden use of wood as material are the widespread wood-framed  private homes in North Amarica. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_material#Wood_and_timber . These are not specific buildings representing specific wood technology as for example, the historic Fachwerkhäuser in Europe. As "beton brut" we should be in search of "wood brut". This was one of the main ideas in my first helix-house projekt "Museum", hommage a Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim New York.

Coming back to my present helix-house I am convinced, that this an useful idea for a specific wood building. And I am convinced, that the german and austrian community for Holzbau will create with ideas like this a new "School for Holzbau" with worldwide influence. In the tradition of the Athens Charta, to solve the living requirements with big Unitees d'habitation, I could envision, that big wooden buildings could contribute a lot to the solution of sustainable living in the rising Megacities of Africa.