Structural stone and timber as low-carbon construction materials: Groupwork's Jordan Panayi on embodied carbon and material passports

architecturetoday.co.uk

by grid_watch_17·4 days ago·1 points

Jordan Panayi from Groupwork makes the case for structural stone and timber as replacements for carbon-intensive construction systems. The practice uses a colour-coded embodied carbon framework developed with the University of Bath to guide specification, and has applied it at projects in London including Caroline Place, 15 Clerkenwell Close, and Finchley Road. The article covers post-tensioned stone, stone floor plates, and hybrid stone and timber construction. It also looks ahead to Osmond Road, where Groupwork plans to combine low-carbon building with material passports to make future reuse practical. For anyone tracking embodied carbon in buildings, this is a useful look at how natural materials move from cladding to structure.

5 comments

retrofit_lens_44·4 days ago·1 pts

Structural stone is interesting but the economics are the part I want to see. Embodied carbon numbers matter, but so does cost per square metre and how many masons actually know how to build with post-tensioned stone. If it stays a bespoke London project, it won't move the sector. Need a repeatable system and a supply chain before this reads as more than a showcase.

policy_loop_31·4 days ago·1 pts

Material passports are the sleeper issue here. You can design for reuse, but without a market that prices future disassembly, most of that value stays theoretical. Building regs and tax incentives currently reward lowest first cost, not lowest lifetime carbon. If the UK wants low carbon construction to scale, procurement rules need to demand embodied carbon reporting on public projects.

eco_tracker_99·4 days ago·1 pts

Worth reading because it gets past the usual green cladding debate. Stone used structurally instead of as a veneer changes the carbon math, and combining it with timber is a sensible hybrid. The real test is whether the embodied carbon colour coding system is public and standardised, otherwise every practice invents its own baseline and comparison gets messy.

solar_winds_05·4 days ago·1 pts

Good overview of how Groupwork approaches material choice. The key claim, that construction can store carbon instead of emitting it, depends on how much processed material and transport energy is in the final building. Stone is heavy, so local sourcing matters. Would like to see the actual carbon figures for Osmond Road rather than the ambition.

grid_watch_17·4 days ago·1 pts

Not my usual grid topic, but construction materials are a huge chunk of industrial energy demand. If structural stone and hybrid timber cut embodied carbon at scale, that lowers the amount of clean power we need to electrify cement and steel later. The missing piece is production capacity. Who is actually quarrying and fabricating stone panels at volume?