The Revalu platform makes use of a million information factors and an AI-powered accuracy checker to allow architects to check the environmental impacts of various constructing supplies.
Based by information scientists in Denmark and launched earlier this yr, Revalu goals to cater to each giant and small structure practices, with three other ways to have interaction with its information platform.
First, there may be the fabric cloud, which gathers over a million information factors associated to the environmental impression of various supplies. This back-end Revalu product has no visible person interface; as an alternative, it’s supplied to structure companies to plug into their very own software program through an software programming interface (API).
That is primarily for giant structure companies utilizing customized design instruments. The fabric cloud gives a mapped and repeatedly up to date dataset in order that when architects create designs utilizing their very own software program, they’ll see correct numbers associated to the initiatives’ environmental impacts.
It saves companies from the laborious job of sourcing and evaluating these scattered information factors themselves, and gives what Revalu says is probably the most complete dataset on the market.
“I feel by far we’re the biggest platform on the market by way of understanding all types of environmental indicators and in addition going past carbon,” Revalu co-founder and CEO Kika Brockstedt instructed Dezeen.
In addition to carbon emissions, Revalu’s 27 mapped environmental indicators embrace water use, renewable power ratio, re-used content material, circularity potential and toxicity ranges.
The second possibility for partaking with Revalu is thru a front-end digital platform. This presents a free and pared-down choice of indicators within the type of a cloth information library.
This platform permits customers to arrange a venture for a brand new constructing, choose supplies for it, examine the info and see a preliminary lifecycle evaluation, with the Danish carbon emissions higher restrict of 12 kilograms of CO2 per sq. metre per yr as a benchmark.
The interface gives a straightforward method to visualise the impression of fabric selections whereas additionally being a helpful communication device in conferences with shoppers.
With the platform, Brockstedt hopes to make extra info out there to solo practitioners and small companies, who she notes are normally at a drawback in not getting access to the in-house sustainability specialists and complex customized software program that enormous companies have.
She describes “a slight monopolisation occurring” over sustainability in structure, with small companies falling “very far behind”.
“The imaginative and prescient is to actually make local weather targets tangible for the trade and to make sure that persons are capable of make shifts very quick,” mentioned Brockstedt. “On the identical time, we need to democratise the info and the entry to it.”
A 3rd, just-launched aspect of Revalu can be meant to broaden entry to info, this time by spreading consciousness of latest low-carbon supplies.
Referred to as the Materials Innovation Hub, this part of the digital platform is curated by Revalu and showcases bio-based and recycled supplies resembling eelgrass, straw bales, hemp, mycelium and sure sorts of timber.
Brockstedt cites a associate venture undertaken with UK studio DaeWha Kang Design for example of the sort of advantages it needs to convey to small companies.
The architects used Revalu’s platform to search out a number of different supplies for his or her renovation of St Andrew Holborn church in London, a Grade I-listed constructing by architect Christopher Wren, hoping to convey the embodied carbon for the venture down sufficient to qualify it for awards. The venture has since been shortlisted within the Architects Journal Awards.
Revalu’s platform is powered by synthetic intelligence — first, a machine studying algorithm that pulls and processes information from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and different sustainability studies, then a second “reliability engine” that runs high quality checks and flags doubtlessly incorrect numbers for follow-up.
The corporate’s main market is Europe as a result of area’s sturdy product information and laws, however Brockstedt says that they’re more and more discovering it attainable to serve the remainder of the world utilizing extrapolated information.
Whereas her time constructing Revalu has taught her in regards to the significance of championing bio-based and different supplies, she says she has additionally come to see that sustainable structure “is just not black and white”.
“Many like to evangelise: concrete is dangerous and wooden is sweet,” she mentioned. “I really assume concrete is a superb materials and sometimes makes extra sense than constructing wooden skyscrapers in a desert.”
“It is about diversifying, and mixing supplies in a sensible approach, the place it makes probably the most sense. And longevity, to make sure that the constructing is there to remain.”
Diversification can be key in the case of biomaterials, she added.
“We can not depend on wooden, so fast-growing supplies resembling bamboo, straw and hemp shall be essential supplies sooner or later,” she mentioned. “Because of this retrofitting present buildings with bio-based supplies could be a nice type of carbon sink.”
Bamboo is the quickest rising plant on the planet, whereas straw is an agricultural byproduct that can be utilized as insulation.
Hemp can be quick rising and was discovered to be “simpler than bushes” at sequestering carbon by Cambridge College.
Photographs are courtesy of Revalu.
