Design studio develops calculator to measure carbon footprint of construction

The design studio is on a mission to address social and urban issues and believes the calculator can encourage the real estate industry to take action

Spotted: International architecture and design studio SOUR have just launched a Carbon Calculator to measure the greenhouse gas impacts of constructed spaces, including the footprint of all its supply chain activities. 

The calculator was developed to raise awareness of carbon footprint and stimulate action amongst the real estate industry.  The tool, which measures the greenhouse gas impacts in terms of carbon dioxide equivalency (CO2e), is based upon the most up-to-date emission datasets. 

SOUR can use the calculator to offset the projected project carbon footprint by donating to Cool Effect, a charity that matches more than 90% of donations to scientifically validated carbon-reduction projects.

According to SOUR, the datasets that current public calculators rely on go back to 2007. They are also not comprehensive, meaning that while they estimate the embodied carbon of a building structure, they do not factor in the entire supply chain that takes place to build the interiors. 

“We have many interior architecture projects we work on, and so we couldn’t use any of the existing tools for those. We wanted to create a tool that estimates the footprint based on the overall process,” said Pinar Guvenc, Partner of SOUR.

The studio has made the tool public in order to encourage all businesses, large and small, to get involved.

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