Description

In Danish, International Women's Day is Kvindernes Kampdag, which literally translates to Women's Fight Day. In that spirit, I present 8 material women, all warriors in the green transition, fighting 365 days a year for less global pollution, radically lower CO2 emissions in the construction sector, and smarter, and indeed even more beautiful, use of our limited global resources:

Ana Rute Costa is professor of sustainable architecture at Lancaster University, UK. She is an educator, researcher, chartered architect and certified Passivhaus Designer, fostering the creation of dynamic links and knowledge exchange between academia and industry. Much of Ana’s work focuses on developing and supporting a circular economy in the construction sector. This approach prioritises the reuse of materials, preventing the over-extraction of natural resources, reducing waste, designing for disassembly and end-of-life decommission processes and practices and minimising carbon emissions throughout a building's lifecycle.

As AHRC innovation scholar, she worked with Rachel Hoolahan at Orms Architects and co-authored the Materials Passports policy paper on how to accelerate material reuse in construction, complemented by a policy paper summarydirected to government and policy makers. The purpose of this research is to enable the widespread adoption of materials passports to support a circular economy.