VI) The Disease of our Design Methods

Concrete and how it pollutes

 FACT: China produces one third of the world’s concrete. In manufacturing 1.56 billion tones of concrete each year the equivalent amount of CO2 is released into the air. The current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is 390 ppm. CO2 makes up 85% of the total greenhouse gases globally.

FACT: Making one tonne of cement requires about two tones of limestone and shale. It consumes 4,000,000,000 joules of energy in electricity, process heat and transport. It produces approximately one tonne of CO2. It produces about 3 kg of NOX, an air contaminant that contributes to ground-level smog. It produces about .4 kg of PM10, an airborne particulate that is harmful to the respiratory tract when inhaled. The manufacturing of cement accounts for 5% of non-energy greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

FACT: Annual production of concrete is five billion cubic yards, which is approximately a volume 17 football fields wide, 17 football fields long and 17 football fields tall—as tall as the tallest buildings in the world . Twice as much concrete is used in construction around the world than the total of all building materials, including wood, steel, plastic and aluminum. 600 million tones of fly ash (replacement for Portland cement) was produced in the world.

FACT: The health problems of concrete are: 1) Skin contact: getting cement dust or wet cement on your skin can cause burns, rashes and skin irritation. Sometimes workers get allergic over prolonged exposure to cement. 2) Eye contact: Getting concrete or cement dust in your eyes causes redness, irritation and possible chemical burns through long exposure. 3) Inhalation: Long term exposure to concrete dust containing crystalline silica can lead to a disabling lung disease called Silicosis.

SOLUTION: The design and use of concrete buildings has not brought humanity any closer to making safe, efficient structures. Most of the structures that have killed people in extreme disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes, have been concrete buildings. I would venture to say that it is with the advent of large, multi-level, concrete buildings that a great amount of human deaths have entered the realm of mass disaster.

We must find new structural systems that have tenuity: are able to withstand pull-apart forces as well as pushing forces and can distribute and dissipate a variety of forces throughout its form. We must devise a material that is lightweight, durable and strong—which concrete, for its weight, is not. Concrete is also very susceptible to water and becomes brittle in fire. We must also find shapes and forms that allow much more flexibility and distribution of stress and strain. These shapes are present in nature and have existed for billions of years yet we continue to ignore them.

The human effects of genetically modified foods

The Tremendous inefficiency of the automobile engine

FACT: 80% of the gas that we put into our car is expended on heat and friction. The remaining 20% moves a 4000 pound vehicle (average car weight) forward. If you weigh 150 pounds then you are 1/26th the weight of the car. So if you put, let’s say, $40.00 US into your car to fill the gas tank, then $32.00 US is transformed into heat and friction. The remaining $8.00 US is pushing the 4000 pound car forward. Since you are 1/26th of this weight then only 1/26th of $8.00 US is actually propelling you forward. This comes to $.30 US of your original $40.00 US that is genuinely moving your body forward. In other words, for every $40.00 US you put in your car, only 30 cents is moving you forward—a huge inefficiency. The rest of your $39.70 US has disappeared into heat, friction and the enertia of moving your 4000 pound vehicle. Is this how you want to spend your money?


SOLUTION: We must do away with the reliance on the internal combustion engine. It is perhaps the most inefficient machine in human history. And it is central to our polluting the environment throughout the world. We have been kept in complete ignorance about the laughable inefficiency of our vehicles. We only concern ourselves with the exterior appearances and no nothing about the substance and workings of the vehicle. We must develop new ideas that provide optimal efficiency and do not use fuels that are harmful to ourselves and the environment. We can direct ourselves to vehicles that use human power for propulsion. We need vehicles to transport ourselves and carry items that we create and those vehicles can be lightweight, strong and easy to manipulate—not the cumbersome, massively heavy, resource-robbing behemoths we drive today.
Natural disasters - we can survive them by designing as nature designs






Suffocating the planet with pavement and roads