– Building for a 3C warmer world
Indy Johar, architect and co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, a collective at the forefront of reimagining how we build in a climate-changed world, spoke with ROBBIE COUSINS about the urgent need to rethink our approach to construction, from embracing circularity to prioritising societal wellbeing, to ensure a sustainable future.
Earth’s average temperature climbed to more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time in 2024, making it the hottest year on record. With this, the world has failed, at least temporarily, to avoid crossing the threshold set by governments to avert the worst impacts of global warming in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
For now, it’s just one metric and one year. Still, researchers say it serves as a stark reminder that the world is moving into the dangerous territory of climate breakdown – perhaps more quickly than previously thought. However, on a positive note, we have not yet breached the Paris Agreement, as this refers to a long-term change or an average over a period of 20 years.
But it does raise a question about how Ireland can prepare for the possibility of exceeding this increase, what impact would it have on Irish society and how we design, construct and manage our national building stock to mitigate and adapt for the impact of a possible 3°C increase in the years to come.
Indy Johar
Indy Johar is a renowned architect and urbanist. He co-founded the UK-based RIBA award-winning practice Architecture00 with David Saxby in 2004. He is a founding director of Open Systems Lab, which has nurtured groundbreaking initiatives like WikiHouse (open-source housing) and Open Desk (open-source furniture). Furthermore, he serves as a non-executive international director of BloxHub, the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanisation.
He is also a co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, a global collective of influential thought leaders dedicated to spatial justice. This brings together academics, public sector and industry leaders from around the globe to develop small-scale projects that challenge conventional thinking on climate change and climate breakdown.
Innovate thinking on housing
Last year, Indy Johar was a keynote speaker at the Irish Green Building Council’s ‘Better Homes’ conference, themed ‘Innovation and Finance for Greener Housing.’ His presentation, ‘Innovate Thinking on Housing,’ explored the critical challenges facing society in a world experiencing a 3°C temperature increase. He outlined the necessary societal shifts to address these challenges, emphasising that as the climate crisis intensifies, government and industry entities are increasingly receptive to the solutions proposed by the Dark Matters Lab team.
He comments: “I think, as the crisis accelerates, people are becoming more receptive to our message. When we started out, I used to think I was being called into boardrooms as a form of entertainment to frighten executives. However, more recently, the level of engagement we’re getting from organisations and government bodies has become quite different, as they are coming to recognise many of the systemic issues that we’re pointing to concerning our capabilities, resources, and financial limits. I believe people are finally getting the message and considering the fundamental changes that must be made at a societal level.”
Dark Matter Labs
Dark Matter Labs is exploring alternative pathways for organising society and stewarding the shared planetary commons. Its working hypothesis is that these pathways must be rooted in a radical reframing of our relationship to everything, from technology and money to land and the other-than-human world. It frames this transformation as a shift towards what it calls ‘Life-Ennobling Economies’.
Indy Johar explains that we cannot be sure how the future will play out or what specific infrastructures will be required. However, we can build towards a range of economic options that are likely to be needed.
“For example, we are looking at new investment opportunities for city-scale tree canopies, community endowments and resilient bioregional food systems. We envisage that the electrification of transport networks, the mental health of communities and the collective intelligence of cities will become recognisable assets, understood as commitments to a regenerative future.”
He gives an example of how the body applies this work in practical terms.
“Dark Matters Lab recently carried out a piece of work that looked at the UK’s carbon budget regarding new build construction. Our findings indicate that within the constraints of the available carbon budget, approximately 17,000 new homes can be built annually. This significantly contrasts with the UK’s ambitious target of constructing around 300,000 homes per year over the next five years. This discrepancy highlights a critical reality: a carbon constraint that will inevitably limit future construction capacity.
“The crucial question then becomes: How can we achieve spatial justice – ensuring equitable access to high-quality living environments for all – within this constrained carbon budget? This necessitates a fundamental rethinking of our current approach. For instance, the UK must prioritise the growth and management of forests specifically for structural timber production to address this challenge. Currently, our managed forests are primarily dedicated to paper and other uses. It’s important to note that a World Resources Institute study on global timber supply, considering transportation factors, reveals a 5% variance in carbon emissions between timber and concrete.”
He offers some advice here for architects: “If you are serious about making transitions, please stop putting sacrificial timber as cladding on the outside of your buildings, as you will have to account for this in your building’s end-of-life management plan. If timber is being used as a sequestration resource to store carbon, you have to take responsibility for storing that carbon for 500 years and managing that life cycle of timber. And our economies are not currently set up to manage minerals and materials through this lifetime structure.”
True costs
Indy Johar comments: “To respond to this challenge, taking carbon budget into consideration, we will have to rebuild a new bio-material base for the construction economy. We will have to build a new circular material construction economy and change the regulatory landscapes to reduce the material demands of our buildings.
He explains that by looking at the problem through this lens, we can see the innovation required in the built environment industry. “The implications of these structural shifts drive our work in Dark Matter Labs. And, we are finding that a growing number of people and organisations are starting to also grapple with these problems.”
He adds that a fundamental question that people conveniently avoid is the true cost of delivering a new-build house.
“The actual cost of a £50 shirt becomes £250 when social and environmental factors are added to the equation. The actual cost of building a £250,000 house would then be in excess of £1m.
“Most people have been externalising true costs up to now, thereby accelerating the harm we are doing to our climate, which means that we’re on route to self-terminating. But if we start to take a true cost approach, how can we build affordability into this, and what will it look like?”
He continues: “These are paradramatic problems that I think people now know they must address. They won’t necessarily talk about it in the public domain as it is not politically appropriate, but behind closed doors, these are starting to become real conversations.”
The role of government
Indy Johar believes that governments have a central role in making change happen. “Governments need to be the demand aggregators for this future. They should be systemically creating the market conditions and driving the demand. Every government building should be systemically regenerative. They should focus on regeneration as a means to drive innovation and create a market capability to respond to future demands.
“Governments need to shift their focus from prioritising cost efficiency to prioritising the capacity for regeneration. This necessitates a demand for products, systems, and approaches fundamentally different from the current norm.”
Comfort & control
According to Johar, architects and engineers frequently engage in excessive engineering, over-specification, and overthinking when designing modern homes, which can lead to unnecessary complexity and carbon costs.
“Lowering our comfort standards slightly could significantly reduce our carbon footprint. We must critically examine the necessity of current insulation standards.
“Material oversupply presents a critical challenge. Many buildings are over-engineered, leading to excessive material use. Reducing material content is crucial for minimising the carbon impact of construction.
“Furthermore, we need to enhance the utilisation and adaptability of our buildings. Achieving this will require revising planning and building regulations to facilitate building repurposing and reprogramming over time.”
Circular economy
Indy Johar remains concerned about how we develop circular construction economies. He explains: “The circularity of construction materials is critical to the broader circular economy. Despite Denmark being a global leader in this area, its circularity rate in construction remains below 4%. This underscores the complexity of the challenge. Achieving a truly circular construction industry requires a holistic approach beyond material considerations.”
Shared spaces
He comments that from an investor’s perspective, there will be much more investment in retrofitting and critical shared infrastructures, such as power grids, the transport network and information and communication systems.
“At an individual citizen level, we will have to consider the increased utilisation and functionality of our homes. When you consider increasing costs and reduced pensions, we will once again have to look at intergenerational living arrangements to provide care. If you start to look at housing from this systematic level, you think about it differently.”
A resilient construction sector
Johar emphasises the critical need for resilient and sustainable supply chains to support the built environment of the future. These supply chains must not degrade our soils or deplete natural resources. He highlights the environmental harm caused by monocultural forestry practices. Instead, he advocates for sustainable agroforestry systems that enable timber harvesting on a 40-year cycle, facilitating long-term carbon sequestration within the built environment.
What temperature rises will look like
Indy Johar emphasises the urgent need for the construction industry to proactively plan for the inevitable impacts of climate change and climate breakdown. He believes a global, industry-wide transformation is necessary to ensure long-term viability.
“A global average temperature increase of 3°C will result in land temperatures rising by 5°C and urban areas experiencing even more significant increases (8-10°C). There are many critical challenges facing our construction sectors if this happens. We are looking at adapting rather than mitigating.
“In contrast, we could also then lose the Mid-Atlantic Drift. This could lead to dramatic temperature drops of as much as 20°C in the UK and Ireland. This underscores the need to prepare for extreme heat followed by cold periods, including the associated energy and heating costs.”
He calls for a proactive approach, urging proper analysis of potential future scenarios and the development of appropriate regulatory frameworks by our governments. “We must also secure the long-term wellbeing of populations by addressing energy, water, and food security needs. “We need careful consideration of resource allocation and the development of strategies to build within the constraints of a changing climate, and we need all sides in government, industry and academia to address all of these critical challenges together as a matter of absolute urgency.”
In conclusion
In conclusion, Indy Johar emphasises the urgency of the climate crisis, climate breakdown and the need for a radical transformation of the construction industry. He highlights the importance of considering and understanding the actual costs, embracing circularity, and prioritising societal wellbeing in all building projects. “By acknowledging the limitations of our carbon budget and adopting and embracing sustainable practices, we can create a built environment that is not only resilient but also contributes to a regenerative future. However, this requires a collective effort from governments, industries, and individuals to reimagine our relationship with resources and embrace a more sustainable way of living,” he concludes.