The building industry plays a major role in climate change, accounting for 39% of global carbon emissions. Although awareness is growing, reducing embodied carbon is still difficult. One of the many hurdles in this process is the overreliance on calculation tools that require detailed models, precise data, and complex databases that are often hidden behind a paywall. As a result, by the time embodied carbon calculations are complete, the opportunity to change the design has often passed. This push for precision has not led to faster or deeper decarbonisation; in fact, a focus on reporting has seemingly distracted designers from taking meaningful action. On top of that, regulations and standards vary between countries, making honest carbon comparisons between projects nearly impossible.

CarbonSpace links quantity inputs such as areas of floor and façade or the volume of a building’s foundation to a streamlined, internationally representative carbon database based on a simplified version of the open-source Ökobaudat database maintained by the German Federal Government. The tool also includes pre-set libraries of common components, materials, and detail build-ups, allowing for faster estimations across a wide range of project types. With this approach, CarbonSpace helps design teams understand how different systems, structures, and materials affect a project’s embodied carbon. For MVRDV, this process has already driven a focus on low-weight designs as the primary factor influencing embodied carbon. It has also allowed the practice to steer projects through the design development, sounding the alarm when the design’s initial sustainable ambitions are threatened by a series of compromises.