Abstract

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.

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.

UN countries have agreed to try to stop global warming at 1.5 degrees. They will achieve this by emitting net zero greenhouse gases by 2050. Norway has announced to cut 55 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Det Norske Veritas (DNV) published a report that displays what measures are needed in order to achieve the goal. The report states that developing countries, aviation, shipping, heavy transport, and some heavy industries will not be able to have zero emissions by 2050, demanding for other sectors to be emission-free earlier. Instead, Europe and North America must become carbon negative by 2042, eight years before the goals of the Paris Agreement. Meaning that they not only have to cut their emissions to zero, but also capture carbon from the air. However, according to DNV, the technology that exists today is indeed sufficient to be able to achieve the climate goals.

In 2019, Oslo had 1 267 060 tons of carbon dioxide being released into the air. This is roughly the average yearly emission-rate in the Municipality.

Translating this number into something more tangible, we can compare this to forest efficiency. To capture 1 millions tons of CO2 you would need over 800 square kilometers of forest, an area larger than the whole city of New York. In contrast, a carbon capture facility can capture the same amount on a 0.4 square kilometer footprint. In comparison, Oslo Municipality has about 300 square kilometers of forest, in theory enough to nearly absorb half of Oslos yearly emissions. However, the majority of Oslos trees and forests are dislocated from the urban center and polluting zones. The polluting epicenters in the denser urban area makes up the negative form of Oslos forests. My argument for climatic solutions needing to be locally embedded around its source of emissions are thus based on efficiency and size.

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.

Based on previous mapping exercises in which emissions, topographical conditions, and site categories were researched, the project is narrowed down to sites in particularly high pollution zones in Oslo. There are three site typologies, three corresponding utilisation concepts, and three corresponding urban strategies. For the strategy to be applicable to different cities and geographical conditions, I have chosen to work with a group of generic sites, which I assume can be found in many cities. The three generic sites are; Industrial buildings and areas, today very few in Oslo are not yet developed for housing or retail; unintended urban spaces, commonly found as voids appearing between infrastructure and development; and temporarily vacant buildings, which in Oslo are mostly owned by the Municipality, but not developed nor used at the moment.

First up is an industrial building and area in Oslo. These are buildingtypologies known for their flexible and large spaces for machinery and production. Filipstad in Oslo is an area under planning. As industry and production today has little to no presence in the city, the industrial areas are one by one being developed for housing.

For industrial buildings, I propose a program adapted to the building's spatial qualities, in which the typology now becomes a concrete casting factory. Storing carbon in cement for concrete has been one of the first ways of commercialising capturing-waste. It allows for concrete to become a zero-emission building-material, through capturing CO2 both from the process of making cement, situating the factory in a polluted area capturing local emissions, and materializing carbon in the casting process. I exemplify how the factory mainly can produce concrete elements for urban use. These elements are bigger things such as whole facades, basketball courts and structural elements, or smaller objects flexible to be set in dense urban contexts, for people to use and interact with.

The spaces surrounding the new factory will act as temporary storage. Urban elements form a dynamic concrete park after production whilst waiting for their final destination. The park will be in constant change as production changes, as each element later will be moved and become a permanent part of the urban fabric. The park can be experienced by bypassers - and depending on the element in production - interacted and played with. Post-storage, the concrete elements will be moved to their permanent spot. Urban furniture, so small they can be placed anywhere in the city and can be interacted with. Due to the carbon capacity of the material, the urban furniture acts as miniature carbon capturing elements scattered all over the city.

Second up, are unintended urban spaces. These are places between infrastructure and development, left over as voids often inaccessible to the public. This particular site is jammed between the historic old town, new waterfront development, and heavy infrastructure projects.

The second storage and utilisation strategy is based on plants and trees as natural carbon storage and carbon utilised in greenhouses. Plants are about 45% pure carbon, stored from absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. For this site, I propose storing and utilising carbon in a greenhouse, aiming to plant trees for the urban environment. On this site, the greenhouse acts as a tree nursery. This is a place where tree-seedlings are planted and grown to a sufficient size in a high-concentration carbon dioxide environment.

As trees grow out of the greenhouse, they need to be conditioned for harsher weather and environmental impacts found in urban contexts. Just outside the greenhouse, the seedlings or small trees are transplanted in order to strengthen and acclimatize. The outside nursery forms an ever changing forest, consisting of different species of medium sized trees - all to later be transplanted in different urban contexts. The forest and nursery forms a pathway and park-like forest for people to safely move between infrastructure and chaos. Today there are about 700 000 trees in Oslo, more or less one tree per Oslo-inhabitant. Oslo Municipality has now decided to plant 100 000 more trees in the urban area. I propose here that the tree nursery can be an extension of this plan, in which growing, grooming and planting the trees locally in the city can take place. Finally, the trees are planted in their permanent location somewhere in the urban environment.

The final site category holds temporarily vacant buildings. Oslo Municipality today owns 94 buildings which are left empty and unused in the city. These unused buildings amount to over 77 000 square meters. 74 of the 94 empty properties are "unresolved", according to an overview from the Real Estate and Urban Renewal Agency (EBY). This means that future use is not finally decided by the municipality.

In carbon capture-processes, water is seized when filtering humidity from the air. The harvested water is then used to cool down the processes rising to more than 900°C, further cooling the gases to 325°C and producing steam for power generation. Power produced by the facility can be utilised in different manners. Step one is utilising the energy in a circular manner, output = input for the carbon capture process. Excess energy can then be sold to the grid, or be utilised directly for immediate surroundings, be it cheap electricity to private homes, a facilitator for low rent public programs, or illuminating dark public areas. On this site I propose a streetlight strategy.

The site's carbon capacity equals 102 tonnes of CO2 annually, this corresponds to an energy production that can generate electricity for 23 158 street lights or 17.1 households/public programs. With this urban strategy, I illustrate a lighting-scheme along the entire length of Akerselva, on both sides of the river with an interval of 20 meters adding up to 800 lights. With this strategy, there is still capacity for 22 358 more lights, or about 16 households or public programs.

In closing, I have wanted to explore how carbon capture infrastructures are scalable from mega-structures to integrated small scale urban industries. This is based on a historic analysis of the relationship between the industrial

revolution and the urban impact of new technology. In parallel, I have developed a deep technical understanding of carbon capture technology today. The thesis has then explored the architectural potentials and potential relationship to urban contexts that carbon capture infrastructures entail, suggesting that a sustainable carbon capturing future can integrate within urban development and planning.

Through my research I identified many potential answers and possible scales applicable to the hypothesis. In order to study possible scales and applications, the thesis applies the prototypes to three possible scenarios. These scenarios are generic conditions that can be found in cities throughout the world, which for this research case are deployed in Oslo, Norway. The scenarios are industrial buildings, unintended urban spaces, and temporarily vacant buildings, which the thesis argues could be replicated in many other urban contexts.

The thesis then designs a proposal for each site. The proposals have the goal of demonstrating how carbon capture can generate urban and architectural form - ranging from large and small urban furniture, to trees and street lights - thus creating interactive and tangible components within the rest of the city. The thesis then posits a potential methodology of site-specific architectural proposals based on a technical CO2 analysis of each site, with the ambition to inspire other cities, architects, planners, and policymakers on realistic and tangible strategies to integrate urbanism and architecture with carbon capture technology. This will be a vital component of achieving the crucial goal of carbon neutrality in the very near future, and the thesis believes to demonstrate that architecture and urbanism have an important role to play.

Through forming durable abstractions about how the world works, we develop technologies that allow us to act upon the world and measure or investigate the world according to those abstractions, such as Copernicus did with telescopes.

Stephen G. Brush, 20201