Materials Don’t Last on Their Own

Materials that require little processing (such as raw earth, fibres and wood) are highly prized today for their excellent carbon footprint and potential circularity. But a veil of suspicion still hangs over them: doesn’t their degrad- ability make them more fragile? It is therefore tempting to subject them to processing so as to make them competitive with their ‘cooked’ equivalents (cement, steel, bricks). And yet, shouldn’t we be arguing, on the contrary, that it is also because their durability depends on the care they receive that they can be described as ecological?