Thanks to everyone who joined RAA’s Field conversation – Natural High – on Friday 31 July in Melbourne, where we gathered at Collingwood Yards, on traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people from the Kulin Nation. A full house came to hear from our learned panel – architect Anna Maskiell of Public Realm Lab, architect Alastair Flynn of Woods Bagot and Dr Rachel Goldlust, educator and natural building consultant, moderated by Field editor, Peter Salhani. Thanks also to event partners AWS and Bookshop by Uro, and a special thanks to Talina Edwards of Envirotecture, who was unable to appear on the panel due to illness.

So, why were we talking about hempcrete? Because hemp is finally having a moment. The long-awaited shift is occurring, and Australia, though late to the party, is finally arriving. State governments around the country are removing arcane legal roadblocks to the commercial cropping of hemp, and grass-roots associations are gathering momentum in the construction industry.

Architects and clients are vital to this momentum – an important regional story. Over the past few years, a number of projects have been completed in towns and regional cities, using hempcrete in boundary-pushing ways. A few are featured in Issue #1 of Field — Architecture Gone Regional, including The Forest (UTAS) in Hobart by Woods Bagot, and the Meeniyan Community Hub in South Gippsland by Public Realm Lab, architects for Powerhouse Place, Mildura. There’s so much passion and craft in these projects, that we wanted to bring their creators into the room for a live discussion and Q&A, hence the event – Natural High.

We know that globally, the built environment produces around 40% of human-made carbon emissions (source: UN) and that hempcrete is one of the highest carbon-sequestering building materials on the planet. Hemp is an amazing plant that grows rapidly, repairing and fixing carbon into the soil as an agricultural crop. When turned into hempcrete masonry, it then filters toxins from the air and dehumidifies, while stabilising temperatures and absorbing ambient sound.

If you’re thinking designing with hemp is too hard, or too herbal or too niche, consider this…. According to the Australian Reduction Roadmap – a multi-disciplinary industry and university research project originating in Denmark – we have a decade left to get carbon emissions under control, before the climate changes forever. And not for the better.