Turning Buildings into Carbon Sinks: Bauhaus Earth at the World Urban Forum

While the building sector remains a primary driver of global warming, the session shifted the spotlight towards a critical but often neglected metric: embodied carbon, which refers to the emissions locked within material supply chains. By championing nature-based materials such as timber, bamboo, earth and straw, the panel showed how buildings can store CO₂ in the long term and actively mitigate climate change.

Panelists Diana Barrera-Salazar, Georg Hubmann and Tino Imsirovic from Bauhaus Earth presented a series of real-world, place-based examples from Cape Town (South Africa), Bali (Indonesia), Thimphu-Paro (Bhutan) and Berlin (Germany). Backed by policy-targeted roadmaps, these case studies demonstrated that nature-based construction methods offer a viable and necessary pathway to a regenerative future in a variety of global contexts.

Moving from theory to practice, the focus of the session was a hands-on co-creation tool. Participants were divided into three working groups to analyse urban housing archetypes collaboratively across Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. The exercise guided attendees through the step-by-step process of evaluating four typical building components: roofs, columns and beams, exterior walls, and ceilings. Having assessed the conventional status quo, participants then envisioned a nature-based transformation scenario, actively discussing supply chain constraints and locally relevant alternative materials - while sharing inspiring examples and stories from their home contexts.

The interactive session bridged the nexus between construction, climate and materials, equipping participants with state-of-the-art knowledge and actionable methodologies. The collaborative experience emphasised a key message: to transform local construction economies towards regenerativity, practical tools, cross-regional dialogue and an in-depth understanding of place-based material value chains are required.