Everyone knows: if we continue in this way, we will go straight into a climate catastrophe. We need a radical turn away from current construction practices and increasingly do without demolitions and new constructions.
The Karstadt building serves its purpose. It operates in black figures, fulfills local demand and is not threatened by collapse.
Demolition and new construction are lunacy:
- Demolition implies the production of waste and its disposal
- The energy and resource consumption of a new concrete construction is enormous
- Concrete is the biggest climate killer: its production requires cement. On a global scale, the production of cement creates more CO2 emissions than global air traffic
- Concrete requires huge amounts of sand that is taken from rivers, oceans and mountains around the world. This process destroys the environment and expels people from their homes
We need a scientific inquiry into the environmental costs of the demolition and construction of a new building in order to holistically assess it in the light of global energy consumption and its consequences for the climate.