[Greenbuilding] 100 miles builds

[David Bergman]

Gennaro brings up a great topic.

"Unbuilding" (as he called it) is similar to what is known as Design 
for Disassembly in product/industrial design.  When I talk about DfD 
in architecture classes and events (and I have a section on it in my 
about-to-be-released book -- apologies for plug), I typically start 
out with some photos of standard building assemblies and demolition, 
illustrating how they make it

1. Difficult -- often near impossible -- to separate materials for recycling
2. Difficult to upgrade or maintain buildings without destructive 
reconstruction.

There are at least a couple of (non-exclusive) approaches to dealing 
with this. In the industrial design version, we focus on using 
mechanical fasteners and assemblies that allow easy separation of 
parts for repair or recycling. The goal is using fewer (often toxic) 
adhesives or other methods of attaching disparate materials so that 
disassembly -- affecting both repair and recycling -- is made 
simpler. I'm sure you can imagine the building construction parallels.

In conjunction with that, I'm a fan of Open Building (or Shearing 
Layers), which recognizes that different building elements last 
differing amounts of time and that the arrangement and fastening of 
building systems should reflect this. For instance, make it simpler 
to relocate electrical or plumbing with destroying finished surfaces. 
Make it simpler to replace elements that wear out (e.g. windows) or 
become technologically outmoded (e.g. lighting) so that a building 
can more effectively be upgraded and thereby delay or obviate the 
point at which it makes more sense to tear it down than to upgrade.

Gennaro's Lego analogy is pretty good though Erector Sets might 
illustrate it a bit better. There are better yet examples in the 
natural world. I'm thinking, for instance, of the processes by which 
trees grow: layers transforming over time; parts (leaves) that 
separate easily to allow growth and replacement, while themselves 
becoming nutrients for the growth of trees an other organisms.

 From a designer's point of view, we should not think of our 
responsibilities ending when the C of O is signed. (I'm not talking 
about legal responsibilities.) But instead view our "children" as 
growing, evolving creatures.

David Bergman  RA   LEED AP
DAVID BERGMAN ARCHITECT / FIRE & WATER LIGHTING + FURNITURE
architecture . interiors . ecodesign . lighting . furniture
bergman at cyberg.com    www.cyberg.com
241 Eldridge Street #3R, New York, NY 10002
t 212 475 3106    f 212 677 7291

author - Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide
adjunct faculty - Parsons The New School for Design

At 08:57 AM 2/26/2012, Gennaro Brooks-Church - Eco Brooklyn wrote:
>Something that is definitely not focused on enough is the art of
>building for future unbuilding. If houses were easilly unbuilt there
>wouldn't be this chasm between new construction and renovation.
>Building would be like Lego. My company definitely does that now, for
>example we have YET to buy new wood. We only salvage old. But it does
>mean a lot of denailing and working with odd shapes. But most
>difficult of all it requires more thinking. Is it financially worth it
>after storage and labor (as if that is the deciding factor)? I think
>so. Besides, what are you comparing it to? The dirt cheap 2x4 from
>lowes that has more hidden costs to it than a house of horrors?
>For me I see my salvaged wood costs as like paying with cash and the
>Lowes wood as like paying with a credit card that somebody else has to
>repay.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Greenbuilding mailing list
>to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
>Greenbuilding at bioenergylists.org
>
>to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
>http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20120226/d67d69e8/attachment.html>