Sustainability and resilience

Feb 4, 2026

Three wind turbines silhouetted on a hill at sunset, showcasing renewable energy on a dramatic landscape. By Diogo Miranda via pexels

.

Sustainability and resilience

.

February 3, 2026 in On-Site

By Jafar Rashidi, Senior Technical Services Specialist, Chryso Canada
Lisa Barnard, LEED AP, WELL AP, Chryso North America

.

Balancing carbon reduction with long-term durability, construction is turning to advanced concrete admixtures to build safer, stronger and more sustainable infrastructure.

The industry is increasingly looking toward admixtures as a means to meet sustainability targets and goals. Image courtesy of Chryso North America.

Sustainability has become the construction industry’s defining challenge. From embodied carbon accounting to net-zero targets, contractors, designers and material suppliers are all grappling with ways to lower emissions while keeping projects on budget and on schedule. Concrete, as the world’s most widely used building material, sits at the centre of this conversation.

Cement, concrete’s binding ingredient, is responsible for roughly seven per cent of global CO2 emissions. For many stakeholders, it’s “the elephant in the room.” But the path forward is not about eliminating concrete, it’s about producing, specifying and using it smarter. That’s where admixtures deliver new solutions, helping to reduce cement content, improve performance and integrate new supplementary cementitious materials (SCM).

Yet, there’s a missing dimension in today’s sustainability dialogue: resilience. It’s not enough to focus only on reducing environmental harm. We must also ensure our structures can withstand hazards of fire, flood, wind and seismic events. In short, true sustainability requires resilience.

Admixture solutions cannot simply be environmentally sustainable, they must also be resilient enough to withstand natural hazards ans seismic events. Image courtesy of Chryso North America.

Resilience: the missing half of sustainability

In 2015, three landmark frameworks emerged from the United Nations: The Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. While the first two frameworks have managed to capture widespread attention, the Sendai Framework, despite its direct relevance to our built environment, remains underutilized in mainstream construction dialogue.

Why does resilience matter? Because a “green” building that fails during the impacts of a wildfire or hurricane is not sustainable at all.

Rebuilding doubles the carbon footprint, displaces communities and disrupts economies. Data from Saint-Gobain’s Sustainable Construction Barometer underscores the shift: resilience is gaining traction globally, particularly in regions exposed to natural hazards. The percentage of respondents prioritizing resilience to climatic events jumped to 21 per cent, the largest increase recorded to date.

Concrete plays a central role here. Its inherent fire resistance, structural integrity under seismic stress and durability in water and wind-prone regions make it indispensable for resilient construction. From seismic-resistant foundations in Mexico City to hurricane-rated walls in Florida, concrete continues to prove itself as one of the most hazard-resilient materials available.

The Canadian Climate Institute reports that every dollar spent today on climate adaptation can return $13 to $15 in direct and indirect benefits over time. For the construction industry, investing in resilient infrastructure isn’t just smart planning – it’s a long-term gain for both communities and the economy.

Chryso Convert C, transforms returned plastic concrete into a dry, hardened, granular state, making it easy to handle and reuse. Image courtesy of Chryso North America.

A lever for carbon reduction

In practice, a sustainable concrete mix should look and perform just like a conventional one. The difference lies in how it is optimized behind the scenes. The goal is to minimize the carbon footprint by reducing cement, maximizing SCMs and using local resources. Admixtures are the enablers of this shift, unlocking multiple pathways to cut carbon without compromising performance.

Four strategies illustrate how:

Cement reduction through strength enhancers

Admixtures like strength enhancers enable producers to achieve equal or greater performance with less cement. High-range water reducers and like EnviroMix SE deliver early and late strength gains of 2.4–4.0 MPa, allowing up to 10 per cent cement reduction without compromising quality.

Maximizing SCM use

Supplementary cementitious materials, including metakaolin and waste-stream products, are increasingly used. Admixtures offset challenges like slower strength gain or higher water demand, enabling greater cement replacement while maintaining performance.

Optimizing local materials

Declining access to high-quality sand drives the use of manufactured and marginal local sands. Admixtures, such as the ChrysoQuad line, improve workability, reduce variability and lower transport emissions.

Enabling circular economy practices

Products like ChrysoConvert C recycle returned concrete into usable aggregates. Together, these strategies lower carbon while maintaining performance.

Admixtures present a lever for contractors to achieve carbon reductions. Image courtesy of Chryso North America.

Performance under extreme conditions

In Canada, sustainability solutions cannot be divorced from performance. Alberta illustrates this reality vividly. With temperatures swinging from -30°C in the winter to +30°C in the summer, producers face unique challenges: hot, dry and windy conditions in summer lead to plastic shrinkage cracking and rapid slump loss, while extreme cold creates curing difficulties.

Effective curing has long been a challenge in this region, and concrete mixes must be designed to maintain durability across these extremes.

Canadian standards provide clear guidance on these challenges. The National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) requires that concrete structures are designed for expected temperature ranges, wind loads and snow/water loads over their intended service life. Additionally, CSA A23.1 cold weather and hot weather concreting guidelines set limits on concrete placement, curing methods and admixture use to maintain performance in extreme climates.

Admixtures are essential to meeting these demands. They extend slump life, improve finishability and support mixes that achieve reliable strength gain even under punishing conditions. In addition to workability control, durability remains a central requirement in the Canadian climate. Air-entraining agents play a critical role by creating an engineered air-void system with proper spacing factor and distribution. This controlled microstructure allows internal pressure relief during freeze–thaw cycles and improves resistance to salt scaling – a major durability concern in regions where de-icing salts are widely used. Crucially, sustainable concrete must look and act like conventional concrete. Contractors should not have to compromise workability or strength in exchange for carbon savings. By tailoring mixes with advanced admixtures, we can ensure that sustainability and performance are aligned, even in one of the world’s most demanding climates.

Admixtures must perform in extreme Canadian conditions. Image courtesy of Chryso North America.

Resilience tools: building resilience index

Material science, however, is only half the picture. Measuring resilience in a systematic way is equally important if we are to balance carbon reduction with long-term durability. This is where tools like the Building Resilience Index (BRI), developed by the International Finance Corporation, come in.

Unlike green certifications that focus mainly on mitigation, BRI evaluates a building’s ability to withstand four major hazards: wind, water, fire and geoseismic activity. A sustainable concrete mix must never mean weaker concrete. With advanced admixtures – strength enhancers, water reducers and SCM-enabling technologies – we can lower carbon while ensuring structures perform under extreme conditions.

While BRI provides a useful global framework, the concept of resilience takes on a unique urgency in Canada. The country already faces some of the most aggressive climate stressors in the developed world: record wildfire seasons in British Columbia and Alberta, catastrophic flooding in Quebec and New Brunswick, coastal erosion in Atlantic Canada and accelerated freeze-thaw deterioration in the Prairie provinces due to increasing temperature variability. These events have triggered a national shift from reactive repair to proactive resilience engineering, not only for buildings, but also for highways, water systems, transit networks and energy infrastructure.

Unlike many countries that rely solely on voluntary sustainability programs, Canada is formalizing resilience in codes, policy and public procurement. The Climate Resilient Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure (CRBCPI) initiative, led by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), has introduced engineering guidance that goes beyond historical weather data by using future climate models that project performance over a 50 to 75-year service life. The goal is to design for evolving climate loads, more severe freeze–thaw cycles, higher rainfall intensity, wildfire heat exposure and longer durability expectations, all of which have direct implications for concrete specification and mix design.

As a practical outcome, resilience is now embedded in Canadian construction standards. The CSA S6:25 Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code requires climate resilience assessments and hydrological risk modeling. CSA A23.1/A23.2 concrete standards emphasize exposure class–based durability, stable air-void structure and resistance to chloride penetration and sulphate attack, critical for marine, transportation and northern construction environments. Provinces like Ontario and British Columbia now include resilience criteria in public infrastructure tenders, meaning ready-mix producers and specifiers must demonstrate durability performance, not just compressive strength.

Canada also recognizes that resilience is not only a materials issue – it’s a societal and economic priority. Through the federal Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF), resilience metrics are now tied to eligibility for major infrastructure funding. In Northern Canada and Indigenous communities, climate resilience strategies prioritize reliable performance in extreme environments where permafrost movement, remoteness and short construction windows present unique engineering challenges. In these regions, the durability of concrete relies heavily on technology-enabled mix designs, including low-temperature accelerators, shrinkage-reducing admixtures and engineered air-entrainment systems that improve resistance to freeze-thaw damage and surface scaling.

Image courtesy of Chryso North America.

A holistic view: sustainability + resilience

The conversation should not pit carbon reduction against resilience. In fact, they reinforce each other. Durable structures mean fewer rebuilds, avoiding the “hidden carbon” of reconstruction. Concrete, properly designed with admixtures, can meet both mandates: lowering embodied carbon while delivering superior resilience.

The construction sector is entering a new era. Net-zero goals remain urgent, but they must be paired with resilience benchmarks to ensure buildings can withstand tomorrow’s hazards. Tools like BRI, combined with admixture-driven low-carbon solutions, offer a way forward.

For the Canadian construction industry, success will depend on collaboration between engineers, producers and policymakers. And with the right technologies and mindset, we can build a future that is not only lower carbon but also stronger, safer and more resilient.

Concrete Construction Construction Materials Green Construction Infrastructure Institutional Leadership LEED Risk Management

.

*

Global population living with extreme heat expected to double by 2050

Feb 2, 2026

A vast aerial view of a densely populated urban residential area with diverse building types. By Ludvig Hedenborg via pexels

.

Global population living with extreme heat expected to double by 2050

by University of Oxford

edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan

.

Add as preferred source

Global population living with extreme heat to double by 2050 — Global mean HDDs for three global warming scenarios. Credit: Nature Sustainability (2026). DOI:10.1038/s41893-025-01754-y

A new University of Oxford study finds that almost half of the global population (3.79 billion) will be living with extreme heat by 2050 if the world reaches 2.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels—a scenario that climate scientists see as increasingly likely.

Most of the impacts will be felt early on as the world passes the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement, the authors warn. In 2010, 23% of the world’s population lived with extreme heat, and this is set to grow to 41% over the next decades.

Regions and populations most at risk

Published in Nature Sustainability, the findings have grave implications for humanity. The Central African Republic, Nigeria, South Sudan, Laos, and Brazil are predicted to see the most significant increases in dangerously hot temperatures, while the largest affected populations will be in India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

Countries with colder climates will see a much larger relative change in uncomfortably hot days, more than doubling in some cases.

Compared with the 2006–2016 period, when the global mean temperature increase reached 1°C over pre-industrial levels, the study finds that warming to 2°C would lead to a doubling in Austria and Canada, 150% in the UK, Sweden, Finland, 200% in Norway, and a 230% increase in Ireland.

Infrastructure and adaptation challenges

Given that the built environment and infrastructure in these countries are predominantly designed for cold conditions, even a moderate increase in temperature is likely to have disproportionately severe impacts compared with regions that have greater resources, adaptive capacity, and embodied capital to manage heat.

Lead author, Dr. Jesus Lizana, Associate Professor in Engineering Science, said, “Our study shows most of the changes in cooling and heating demand occur before reaching the 1.5ºC threshold, which will require significant adaptation measures to be implemented early on. For example, many homes may need air conditioning to be installed in the next five years, but temperatures will continue to rise long after that if we hit 2.0 of global warming.

“To achieve the global goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, we must decarbonize the building sector while developing more effective and resilient adaptation strategies.”

Dr. Radhika Khosla, Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and leader of the Oxford Martin Future of Cooling Programme, added, “Our findings should be a wake-up call. Overshooting 1.5°C of warming will have an unprecedented impact on everything from education and health to migration and farming. Net zero sustainable development remains the only established path to reversing this trend for ever hotter days. It is imperative politicians regain the initiative towards it.”

Energy demand and new climate data

The projected increase in extreme heat will also lead to a significant rise in energy demand for cooling systems and corresponding emissions, while demand for heating in countries like Canada and Switzerland will decrease.

The study also includes an open-source dataset of global heating and cooling demand, comprising 30 global maps at ≈60km resolution that capture climate intensity in “cooling degree days” and “heating degree days” worldwide. This dataset provides a strong foundation for incorporating accessible climate data into sustainability planning and development policy.

Publication details

Lizana, J. et al, Global gridded dataset of heating and cooling degree days under climate change scenarios. Nature Sustainability (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-025-01754-y www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01754-y

Journal information: Nature Sustainability

*

Tourism offers a golden opportunity for MENA countries

Jan 31, 2026

We must completely change the way we build

Jan 17, 2026

The Sawa residential building in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is made from wood – Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock

.

We must completely change the way we build homes to stay below 2°C

.

By Michael Le Page in New Scientist

14 January 2026

.

Construction generates between 10 and 20 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but cities can slash their climate impact by designing buildings in a more efficient way

.

Cities must reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the construction of buildings and infrastructure by more than 90 per cent in the next two to four decades if the world is to avoid warming of more than 2°C. That means radical changes are needed in the design of buildings, or what they are built from, or both.

“Canada wants to triple its rate of housing construction. The US has a housing deficit, Australia has a housing deficit, [and so does] basically every country you go to right now,” says Shoshanna Saxe at the University of Toronto, Canada. “How do we build so much more while also demanding that we pollute so much less?”

Yet this is achievable, Saxe thinks. “We’re already building buildings that meet these targets; we just have to build more of the good and less of the bad,” she says. “We’ve had these skills and this knowledge for decades; we just have to use it.”

Globally, construction generates between 10 and 20 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, with much of that due to the production of cement. To get these emissions down, countries and cities need to know their current construction emissions and then plan how to reduce them in line with global targets.

But when Saxe’s team was asked to do this for the city of Toronto, the researchers were surprised to find that very few studies have attempted to estimate construction emissions on a city level.

“So we decided to come up with a way of getting a rough estimate of how much cities are emitting when they build buildings and infrastructure, and then also how much they could emit in the future to stay within climate limits,” says team member Keagan Rankin, also at the University of Toronto.

Rankin did this for 1033 cities by combining an existing model used to estimate the environmental impact of products over their lifetime – known as EXIOBASE – with data on the population and growth of cities, construction investment and employment, and so on. “This is all available datasets, but he put them together in new ways that we haven’t seen anybody do,” says Saxe.

Finally, the team estimated how fast each city would need to cut construction emissions to stay in line with the remaining global carbon budget for 2°C. These numbers are crucial for planning, Saxe says, “You need to know what the budget per sector is.”

Cities will bust these budgets if they meet housing demand by building single-family homes, the analysis suggests. They need to focus on more efficient multi-unit housing.

Using different materials such as wood or recycled concrete can also help reduce emissions, but better design is even more important, says Saxe.

“It’s very popular to say we’ll just build wood buildings and that solves it,” she says. “But wood also has greenhouse gas emissions. It is only zero emissions if you make all kinds of really optimistic assumptions, including the rate of forestry growth.”

“It’s actually much more effective to design your buildings well so there’s not a lot of wasted space, and wasted structure,” says Saxe.

Rankin says that cities are well positioned to take action. “Cities are very willing to implement climate action, and when it comes to construction, they have a lot of control,” he says. “It’s just, like we found with Toronto, a lot of cities don’t have the resources to go and determine a budget.”

“Without reducing emissions from the construction sector, we cannot meet the Paris Agreement, even if we reduce other emissions to zero,” says Prajal Pradhan at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. “In my view, it is helpful to view emissions from a city budget perspective.”

It is also important to design buildings to be low-emission over their entire lifetime, not just during construction, says Susan Roaf at Heriot Watt University in the UK, such as by allowing natural ventilation. “We cannot go on developing cities as they have been growing, riddled with super-polluting ‘zombie buildings’,” she says.

Cutting construction emissions also involves prioritising what is built, Saxe says. For instance, Canada is still constructing a huge amount of oil and gas infrastructure. “We could build new housing for 10 million people [without increasing emissions] if we dialled back how much construction we were putting into oil and gas,” she says.

Journal reference: Nature Cities DOI: 10.1038/s44284-025-00379-8

*

Hope and optimism in architecture at the 2026 Wallpaper* Design Awards

Jan 16, 2026

.

photo-collage for theme of hope and optimism in architecture wallpaper* design awards 2026

Our three Architects of the Year are Je Ahn (top left), Marina Tabassum (bottom, centre) and Lina Gotmeh (top right). Three houses get the nod for Best Use of Material: Rammed Earth House by Tuckey Design Studio (bottom left), Sombra de Santa Fe by DUST Architects (top, centre) and Bin Nouh’s Courtyard House by Shahira Fahmy

(Image credit: Mixed credit)

.

Architecture is an inherently optimistic profession – a quality instilled in me through training and flagged to me in many an interview over the years. Architects set out to change the world, often consciously and purposefully, quite literally shaping the environment around us. It helps to remember this essential positivity at a time when it is easy to get caught up in global events that weigh heavily on our minds.

view of Rammed Earth House by Tuckey Design Studio with tactile walls and earth tones — Rammed Earth House by Tuckey Design Studio wins a Best Use of Material 2026 award alongside two other exceptional homes using earth building techniques – (Image credit: Jim Stephenson)

We celebrate hope and optimism in architecture

At Wallpaper*, we are always keen to champion innovations, ideas and designs that bring hope and optimism, including architectural wonders that put a smile on our faces. There have been quite a few of those over the past year. The 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale had its critics, but it also showcased the architecture world’s hunger for change. Meanwhile, Sarah Housley’s new book Designing Hope discussed specific scenarios that nod to a better outlook for us all.

views of Sombra de Santa Fe, new mexico house, with dark, minimalist geometric volumes and clean walls and long nature views — Sombra de Santa Fe, a New Mexico house by DUST Architects, was one of the three homes sharing our Best Use of Material 2026 award – (Image credit: Joe Fletcher)

Also in 2025, Finland was named the world’s happiest country for the eighth year in a row; its ambitious sustainability strategies surely play a role here (policy makers, take note). Elsewhere, ingenious initiatives, such as Retrofit House – a live showcase of sustainable homebuilding techniques, by Civic Square, Dark Matter Labs and Material Cultures – landed to give power to ordinary people.

views of mud brick house with warm hues in desert building style, Bin Nouh's Courtyard House by Shahira Fahmy — Bin Nouh’s Courtyard House by Shahira Fahmy in Saudi Arabia’s AlUla is another home using earth building techniques and sharing our Best Use of Material 2026 accolade – (Image credit: Nour El Refai)

Above all, it’s the plurality of architectural voices and radical solutions by the world’s creative minds that brings the most hopeful message for a sunnier future. And what better way mark what we look forward to seeing more of than our annual Wallpaper* Design Awards?

In that spirit, a series of our 2026 awards – newly announced in the February issue of Wallpaper* and featured over the coming weeks on Wallpaper.com – celebrates one of the many ways in which we can sustainably diversify building design and construction: working with earth. Once dismissed as ‘backwards’ and unfashionable, building with earth is making a strong comeback. Readily accessible, endlessly adaptable, and honed through generational wisdom, this construction method has many iterations across the world. Polished or textured, geometric or organic, today’s earth buildings look as aspirational as the finest, conventionally built 21st-century villas.

portrait of 2025 Serpentine Pavilion architect Marina Tabassum

Our Best Use of Material awards category spotlights three standout residential examples that use local soil – in the UK, the US and Saudi Arabia – with decidedly contemporary outcomes that show off the age-old technique’s potential.

black and white portrait of architect Lina Ghotmeh shot by Brigitte Lacombe

When we interviewed each of them, continuing in our pursuit of optimism, we asked them to name a building that made them smile. We were looking for spatial expressions of serenity – architecture that brings hope and a visceral twinkle. We also ended up talking about everything from height-specific kitchen counters and spilling wine on light-coloured floors to the revelation that architecture need not take centre stage, and we left feeling inspired. Here’s to a great year in architecture – join us as we raise our always-half-full glass.

.

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).

*

Sustainability and resilience

.

Sustainability and resilience