Introduction

Through technology and innovative discoveries, the Industrial Revolution introduced our urban environment to both new opportunities and new environmental challenges. Globally connected industries and manufacturing, large infrastructural networks and cheap energy - all technologies crucial to our cities and economy’s rapid growth - were developed during this period. Similarly, my thesis is based on exploring the synergies between new technology, the urban environment and environmental challenges through global, urban and local scales. The thesis is therefore a hypothetical project about climate change measures and urban industry in symbiosis.

There is urgency for a counter-reaction to the urban, social and environmental consequences of the Industrial Revolution, and the polluting traditions which this generation caused. As new technologies emerge and we enter a modern era of industrialisation, definitions and approaches to industry change. Heavy industry has been relocated away from city centres, due to globalization, pollution, changes in production and newer demands for dwellings and leisure in cities. Our cities no longer contain the resources or spaces conventional production requires, and these factories provide little prosperity in an urban context. Still, infrastructure and consumer trends remain, still contributing to air pollution in our urban areas.

The thesis is based upon a prototype of the larger infrastructures of Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS), which are utilized in order to tackle the rapid escalation of climate change and emissions. The prototypes explore carbon capture as small-scale urban factories, rather than the megastructure which may be expected. Running off the city as a resource (CO2), the manufacturing process (CCUS) materialises emissions into a tangible, informative asset. Thus, the thesis asks if urban production can contribute to the benefit of our climate and urban environment.

My hypothesis is based on exploring carbon capturing in fragmented, smaller scales - closer to that of trees - which utilizes the city as a resource. The project is therefore conceptualized as a network or series of acupuncture projects, responding locally to the same challenges which similar large scale industries address in non-urban contexts. The thesis aims at exploring these potentials through the development of a prototype which is applied, calculated, and tested through varying case studies and scales in polluted city-zones in Oslo, Norway.