Why the 200 km radius.
We source primary structural material within a 200 km arc of every Kaern site. Not as orthodoxy — as accountability.
The number is arbitrary. We know this. There is nothing magical about 200 kilometres — a marble quarry at 210 km is not less ethical than one at 190.
But the rule is not really about the number. It is about whether anyone in the studio has stood in the place the material came out of the earth. 200 km is roughly the distance you can drive to and from in a day. It is the radius of having seen.
Accountability is geographic
A building made of materials whose origins no one in the practice has visited is a building no one in the practice can vouch for. The carbon arithmetic might add up. The certificates might be in order. But there is no one to ask. The 200 km radius is the radius inside which there is someone to ask.
200 km — the radius of having seen
What it costs
It costs us money and it costs us palette. We cannot use Carrara marble in Mexico. We cannot use Indian teak in Sweden. We have built rooms that would have looked better with materials from further away, and we have refused them, and the rooms are nevertheless good.
"A building is the sum of where its parts grew up."
What it gives back
The constraint produces vernacular. Every Kaern site looks slightly different because every site has a slightly different soil, a different timber, a different quarry. The buildings are coloured by their ground. This is a thing money cannot otherwise buy.
Filed under Method. See also: The Method · What we mean by ‘the held core’.