For the past five years, Google has been running its own Healthy Materials program, which evaluates products for their potential health risks to employees.
That program worked fine when Google was just renting space and only had to worry about things like off gassing from furniture or paint. But when the search engine giant got into ground-up construction, “we were running into a lot of commodities” whose content wasn’t always transparent, says Drew Wenzel, Google’s campus design technical specialist. Consequently, the company wasn’t getting answers about products fast enough to make informed design, construction, and cost decisions.
“We tried to do this ourselves on one big project, and then asked ourselves if there was a better way,” says Wenzel.
That better way, he believes, is the Quartz Project, a year-long collaborative effort that Google entered into with Healthy Building Network, think step (a sustainable software provider), and Flux. Quartz Project is providing what it touts to be the AEC industry’s first free and open-source initiative that brings health and environmental information on 100 building products into a single database.
“Too many design decisions are still being made without the benefit of this information,” Drew tells BD+C. This database, he explains, allows designers and engineers to incorporate the data into existing analytical and design tools.
The Quartz Project launched its database at the VERGE 2015 conference in late October. Since then, “there’s been a lot of excitement in the AEC community” about the product, says Vivian Dien, a product manager for Flux and its Quartz Project Lead. The collaborative will be giving demos of its portal at Greenbuild in Washington D.C. next week.
This database offers product profiles for 100 commonly used building materials, from acoustical ceiling panels to XPS insulation. The information for each product includes its general composition, impurities, health profile (the product’s various health risks as a percentage of its total content weight), and environmental profile (such as Cradle-to-gate LCA results, end-of-life treatment, and so forth).
Dien says Healthy Building Network did an extensive scan of existing research and information to assemble this database. HBN was also charged with vetting the information.
The main value of this database, say Dien and Wenzel, is aggregating and standardizing product data into an open-source environment. They are quick to note, though, that the Quartz Project has avoided assigning specific health risks to individual products. “The risk portion needs to be carefully thought out,” says Wenzel. “We hope that software engineers will look at this database to develop tools that can integrate this information into a Revit model to have conversations early in the design process.”
They also see this database as a “benchmark,” which can be used to understand a product’s health baseline and to track improvements.
The Quartz Project is the industry’s latest effort to bring greater transparency to product content. Other prominent groups in this arena include the Health Product Declaration Collaborative, an open-standard format for reporting material content and potential health hazards; and The Cradle-to-Cradle Institute, with its five levels of certification for products as they travel a path to meet the organization’s criteria for material health, reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, and social fairness.
Wenzel views those other sources as “predominantly” for products “that are unique or highly controlled.” Whereas the primary purpose of the Quartz Project’s database, he says, is as “an early-phase design tool.”
Related Stories
Wood | May 14, 2021
What's next for mass timber design?
An architect who has worked on some of the nation's largest and most significant mass timber construction projects shares his thoughts on the latest design trends and innovations in mass timber.
3D Printing | Nov 27, 2020
The Fibonacci House: A test case of 3D construction printing
The Fibonacci House, which we have named after Leonardo Fibonacci, the medieval Italian mathematician, illustrates the potential of 3DCP and demonstrates how a complex design and challenging logistics can be solved through pragmatic planning and 3DCP technology.
Building Materials | Jul 5, 2020
A new report predicts significant demand growth for mass timber components
There should be plenty of wood, but production capacity needs to catch up.
Sponsored | Voice of the Brand | Jun 5, 2020
Practice Style Transcendence with Brick
Get inspired! Brick’s adaptability has made it the premier building material for centuries even as styles come and go. Nothing says “classic” like brick, but nothing says “innovative” like brick either. Check out some examples of how fired clay brick remains a major presence in the 21st Century designer’s palette.
Building Materials | Jun 4, 2020
The world’s first building made from carbon-fiber reinforced concrete starts construction in Germany
But greater use of these materials still faces obstacles.
Coronavirus | Apr 16, 2020
COVID-19: Pennsylvania building products supplier raises $1.2 million for Pittsburgh-area food bank
Pennsylvania building products supplier raises $1.2 million for Pittsburgh-area food bank.
Building Materials | Apr 8, 2020
The key to building in space may just be… urine?
A new building method to potentially make space architecture possible enters the fray.
Coronavirus | Apr 5, 2020
COVID-19: Most multifamily contractors experiencing delays in projects due to coronavirus pandemic
The NMHC Construction Survey is intended to gauge the magnitude of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak on multifamily construction.