innovation’ and an ‘architectural revolution’ to achieve the ‘engineers aesthetic’ 12. This ‘engineers aesthetic’ contributed to the formation and widespread use of concrete and steel 13 deployed in buildings and infrastructure all over the world to solidify the status as the world’s most common material(s). These industries are the single largest carbon emission contributor in the UK and responsible for 13% of all annual carbon emitted worldwide 14. However, it is not the aim of this study to denounce the work of Le Corbusier or comment on the validity of his proposals, but it is important to recognise the environmental qualities of buildings that have significant inspiration and role as architectural icons, that have and continue to inspire countless generations that taint innovative contemporary projects with environmentally destructive buildings. 2. Methodology This dissertation has been structured to present the reader with the digestible format of two parts to understand primarily, What is carbon in buildings, How can it be calculated? And What is the significance of this tool for architectural design? The line of enquiry is facilitated by ‘The Villa Savoye, (Le Corbusier)’- a modernist icon, to provide a basis for exploration and the historical interpretation of data to calculate the embodied carbon in buildings. The latter chapters compare the scope of tectonic language in the wall construction typology(ies) of ‘the Farnsworth house, 1951 (Mies van der Roche)’ and ‘the Breuer house, 1948 (Marcel Breuer) in the search for a broader, deeper investigation to their implicational use. The case studies used in this report are driven from a contextual dependent narrative subject to the limitations of primary and secondary sources, it is important for the reader to understand the data required to undertake a life-cycle carbon assessment is unique to every building and reliant on orthographic drawings and the specification of materials. Typically, this process is undertaken in the latter RIBA design phases in varying scales of definition and specification of building elements to inform the selection, quantity, and quality of materials. This relies upon the author to make assumptions based on qualitive and quantitative research that contribute to the contextualisation of projects in respect to the calculations themselves, therefore objectively questioning the accuracy of this report. However, not intended is a scientific study on the accuracy of calculating carbon for a particular building but rather a preliminary investigation towards the implication of using
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Frederick Etchells "Towards a new architecture by Le Corbusier", (New York: Dover Publications, 2020) (Calder 2021) 343 14 Timo Gerres “Green steel production: how G7 countries can help change the global landscape”, (Online: Lead it, June 2021) file:///D:/GSA/Stage%204/P4/wk%2019/IN/g7-green-steel-tracker-policy-brief.pdf 13
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