Every decision architects, urban designers, and planners make has an impact when implemented, not only on the site of construction, but also on the site of extraction and of production. From the window frames of a house to the concrete pillars of a highway bridge, from the wood flooring of a living room to the asphalt of our streets, and from the steel bolts of a door to the tree species of a park, choices about the materiality of the built environment have a global knock-on effect. 

The asphalt shingles on your roof are made of cellulose, wood fiber, and bitumen, which comprises petroleum extracted either from crude oil or from asphalt mines.¹ They are attached to rain gutters manufactured out of copper, which is found alongside zinc in sulfide-rich ore and extracted via underground (or hard rock) mining, which, once exposed to air and water, generates poisonous sulfuric acid. The additional joint isolation between shingles is made of synthetic rubber derived from petroleum-based elastomer. The insulation panels under the shingles are made of foam (polystyrene or polyurethane, typically — both -derived from crude oil) and fiberglass-slag wool (aluminum, silicon, calcium-oxide). Aluminum is made out of bauxite, which is extracted via strip-mining processes that obliterate top-soil and, therefore, wildlife habitats. The roof framework is constructed of wood, typically cedar or pine. Supply for these woods comes from industrial forestry, responsible for the clearcutting of carbon-dense older forests that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The structural elements holding the framework together are made of steel, which is composed of iron ore and coke (a coal-based fuel) extracted through underground mining, then mixed in a blast furnace. This process alone is responsible for generating some 9% of the carbon dioxide emissions globally.

Interior partition wall layers are typically fashioned from plywood (sheets of pine adhered together using water and a petroleum-based glue), alongside fiberglass insulation made of plastic, borax, and mirabilite. Borax is mined in open-pits, while mirabilite comprises sodium sulfate harvested from lake beds. The windows and their frames are made of float glass, which, in turn, is composed of soda lime, glass, silica, quartz, and metal (either tin or iron ore). Silica is sourced from sand and quartz, both of which are extracted in open pit mines. Drywall is made of gypsum (calcium, sulfite, and silica). Electrical wiring and heating systems are in metal (copper, aluminum) and plastic (silicon, elastomer-petroleum based). The foundations are built with cement brick and concrete (limestone, sand, gravels, and other aggregate). Concrete, which even its own industry representatives recognize as unsustainable, remains the most prevalently used construction material in the world.²

This non-exhaustive, somewhat naïve, and simplified listing of the materials necessary to build a house derives from my current research on architectural details and their physicality. Using a previous exploded axonometric drawing titled “Parts” produced by the Californian office Morphosis—which is a precise inventory of each element used in the details of a house constructed following North American construction protocols of the 1970s-1980s—as a template, this critical new drawing seeks to establish a methodology on building construction by bridging the distance between design and extraction. Morphosis’s catalogue of architectural details is not preoccupied with the origins of the materials employed, but rather provides “a Revell-model-like” format that details each aspect of the building’s construction “in a form any layperson could comprehend.”³ Only once it has been “politicized” by accounting for the sources of each details’ material, does this document make visible patterns that determine how biophysical attributes of space production are combined, produced, and sourced— refracting views into the political economy of construction.