Tag: low-carbon structural design
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Material efficiency as a key opportunity to reduce embodied carbon in structural systems: Data insights from 226 fully designed projects
Data on embodied carbon in our sector offer unique opportunities to answer key questions about (1) the relative contributions of structural components to emissions, (2) the relationship between material system choice and resulting quantities, and (3) the relationship between material quantities and embodied carbon. Although such analyses have been performed for synthetic data, these types of findings are…
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Bottom-up estimates of floor area and embodied carbon patterns in the US building stock
What is the distribution of Gross Floor Area (GFA) and embodied carbon among building types and building sizes in the United States? By count and floor area, the US building stock is dominated by residential buildings, especially small ones. The data are strongly right-skewed: the top 6% of buildings by floor area make up 50%…
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Co-chairing special session at ICSA 2025
Prof. Demi Fang will be co-chairing a special session at International Conference on Structures and Architecture (ICSA) 2025 at the University of Antwerp in July 2025. The special session is titled “The Next Generation of Embodied Carbon Reduction Strategies” and is co-chaired with colleagues Dr. Jonathan Broyles and Martín Torres. See you there!
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Trans-typology design space exploration: Using gradients to inform decision-making in the design of spanning structures
Does a timber beam or a steel truss result in a lighter structure? Between shortening the span and decreasing the load demand, which results in a more efficient structure? Structural designers pursuing high-performance design must typically make decisions based on perceived tradeoffs. As an alternative to the extreme paradigms of deploying rules of thumb and…
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SEI “Towards Zero Carbon” Workshop at Northeastern University
Led by Prof. Jerry Hajjar, outgoing president of the Structural Engineering Institute and Department Chair at Northeastern University CEE, the workshop “Towards Zero Carbon: Developing a Roadmap for the Structural Engineering Profession and the Structural Engineering Institute, ASCE” took place at Northeastern University, bringing together practitioners and academics to envision the path to a net…
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Reducing embodied carbon with material optimization in structural engineering practice: Perceived barriers and opportunities
Structural engineers play an essential role in reducing embodied carbon emissions in buildings, which contribute significantly to global carbon emissions. In this work, 39 structural engineers primarily from the Northeastern US are surveyed on how embodied carbon is reduced in practice, particularly through computational tools that facilitate material efficiency (e.g. parametric design models and structural optimization tools). Leading barriers to…
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System-level design of low-carbon structures
“What is more likely to be associated with a reduction in emissions: switching from concrete to timber, or shortening the spans throughout the building?” While such insights are valuable for mitigating emissions from structural systems during early stages of design, it is difficult to answer these types of questions in current paradigms of performance-driven design.…
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Strategies to reduce embodied carbon in early-stage structural design
While many strategies have been identified and proposed for reducing embodied carbon in early-stage structural design, they are rarely synthesized to discuss their relative effectiveness and compatibility. Discussing the strategies together rather than individually is important because not all strategies are equally effective or can be implemented simultaneously. This paper presents a synthesized discussion by…
Structural Futures Lab 