Lignacite Lecture 2013: the future of sustainable construction

On 26 September, World Cement attended the Lignacite Lecture 2013 at the Royal Society in London to discover what Professor Doug King had to say about the future of construction. Professor King is a leading authority on sustainable construction, and had been expected to discuss future building materials and construction techniques. In fact, Professor King took the audience of architects, specifiers, designers, environmentalists and representatives from construction and local authorities on a journey through historical building practices. He pointed out that buildings evolved to suit their environments, utilising locally available building materials that are made to withstand the local climate and the requirements this imposes on construction. Such considerations, he said, should be taken into account when we think about the future of construction.

“Everywhere I look,” he said, “I find evidence of underlying physical properties that have influenced the choices of generations of builders. From structure to roof tiles to paint, the properties of certain materials and methods have brought benefits to buildings, despite these rarely being overtly recognised. We need to examine these with a view to identifying new opportunities for creating high performance, low impact buildings that have not yet even been imagined.”

The lecture was sponsored by Lignacite, a leading UK manufacturer of masonry products. Chairman Giles de Lotbiniere was delighted that Professor King accepted the invitation to address this year’s Lecture. “He is a building physicist and one of the most influential figures on sustainable construction in the world,” he said. “He raised some important points, and at Lignacite we are already working to address his challenge of developing high performance, low impact buildings and conserving resources by using up to 50% of recycled materials in our products.”

Lignacite recently launched the Carbon Buster, a carbon negative building block that incorporates recycled materials and carbonated aggregates derived from byproducts of waste-to-energy plants. “We believe this block has an important role to play in helping to meet the UK’s zero carbon homes targets and build a more sustainable future,” said Giles.

Adapted from press release by Katherine Guenioui