The Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) held the 326th Shuangqing Forum on 22 February 2023. As the first forum of 2023 and one of the first in-person activities post-COVID, a topic of national and global significance was chosen: the challenges, for basic sciences, of reaching carbon neutrality in construction and architecture. National Science Review ( NSR ) attended this forum, as several presentations related to materials science and information science would appeal to the broad audience of NSR . In the plenary session, four members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), Profs. Jiaping Liu, Jianguo Wang, Weimin Zhuang and Hongyuan Mei, provided an overview of the challenges facing construction and architecture industries in the run-up to carbon neutrality.