Grace’s Reviews > The New Carbon Architecture: Building to Cool the Climate > Status Update

“About 60[%] of all adhesives manufactured worldwide are used in the fabrication of engineered wood products. Conventional adhesives are made using phenol formaldehyde, urea formaldehyde, or polymer isocyanates — materials identified as either allergens or carcinogens.” This contradicts like EVERYTHING that precedes it but YES THANK YOU FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT!! Oh my gOd that was driving me BONKERS THANK YOU

Losing my mind at “It’s not a particularly sexy idea” RE making gravel. GRAVEL. So I guess the implication here is that some ideas about improving gravel are, in fact, sexy? I GUESS?? My primary takeaway from this is that the author looks at gravel and the dichotomy that readily comes to mind is “sexy or not sexy”??? It’s GRAVEL, my dude. Yea yea I know semantics whatever but HONESTLY. G R A V E L.

The philosophy of this book is so ENDLESSLY frustrating because it’s so *prescriptive.* “Here is X problem, let’s treat it by the same exact methods that put us into the situation in the first place.” Where’s your imagination! Your architectural spirit! Go Google Fab Tree Hab and tell me you still believe in CLT as a reasonable method of developing sustainable futures

“However, most structural wood glues have either low or no VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) emissions and therefore should not be a major concern to specifiers”
*eye twitch*

This book’s campaign isn’t nearly aggressive enough in the health sector. It’s advocating for wood-based structures in the name of environmental mitigation, and yay for that, but it specifically cites CRT and glulam as wood products for consideration! no!! Stop that!!! This book doesn’t even RECOGNIZE that melamine is an EDC!!!!! Trading one global issue for another, global climate change for toxicology.

Adhesives on engineered lumber? Do you ever read something that makes your internal ecotoxicology compass rotate until it points solidly to “BAD”? https://hpdrepository.hpd-collaborati...
That’s a ✨known carcinogen✨. On like,, multiple fronts. Big yikes!!!