[Greenbuilding] 100 miles builds

[Douglas E Lamb]

The 100 Mile Thread,
 
There is a design competition every year called "Life Cycle Building
Challenge" that promotes the use of local recycled and repurposed
construction materials.
Here is the link:  <http://www.lifecyclebuilding.org/>
http://www.lifecyclebuilding.org/ 
I've entered it a couple of times. It was a lot of fun designing under the
constraints of "Deconstructionism". The requirements incorporated into a
design submittal are precisely those elements that are being discussed here
in 100 mile/LCA thread. The web site is worth a look see and they have a
splendid compilation of directives for recycling and reuse construction.
>From reading the presentations made through this thread the 100 mile/LCA
venture can be hazardous in an antithetical way of speaking for you
practitioners of green construction.
 
Regards,
Doug Lamb
douglaslamb at columbus.rr.com
 
 

  _____  

From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of David
Bergman
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 2:20 PM
To: Green Building; Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] 100 miles builds


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     <http://www.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.

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