Flames and smoke rise from the interior of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2019, after a fire engulfed the building. ( PHILIPPE WOJAZER AFP/Getty Images)
As the oak frame met its end, so too did remnants of Europe’s dwindling ancient forests.
Source: Notre Dame’s Fire Rebuild: Forests That Supplied Wood Are All But Gone | Fortune
SAWTOOTH BENCH BY: DURODECO $2,050 THE SAWTOOTH BENCH IS MADE FROM RECLAIMED AMERICAN OAK BARN BOARDS FROM VIRGINIA. THE GEOMETRY OF THE PIECE, ITS NAMESAKE “SAWTOOTH” PATTERN, DRAWS ATTENTION TO THE DISTINCTIVE END GRAIN OF THE WOOD. GLASS LEGS SLOT INTO THE BUTCHER-BLOCK STYLE SEAT TO CREATE A CONNECTION BETWEEN NEW AND OLD.
Source: Sawtooth Bench – In The Pursuit
In October 2016, in an effort to reduce waste, support material reuse, and reduce environmental impacts of demolition, the City of Portland, Oregon, enacted an ordinance requiring manual deconstruction of residential homes built in 1916 or earlier. This study analyzes the material quantity data from the first 36 deconstruction projects in Portland to measure carbon and energy impacts. The carbon and energy impacts were also calculated for a hypothetical scenario in which the same houses were mechanically demolished.
The goal of this project is to calculate the carbon and energy impacts of deconstruction and demolition of
single-family houses in Portland, Oregon. The results will allow the City of Portland to measure the effectiveness of their deconstruction policy in achieving climate and energy goals.https://www.oregon.gov/deq/FilterDocs/DeconstructionReport.pdf
https://www.oregon.gov/deq/mm/production/Pages/Deconstruction.aspx
The Board of Selectmen approved an agreement with a salvage company to take items, including the front door and door knocker, from the house at 35 Wolfe Ave. in Beacon Falls, known locally as the Tracy Lewis House, for $3,000. –LUKE MARSHALL
While the items may fetch more money than the company is paying the town, officials said there’s no other proposals on the table. “We have nobody knocking on the door to go in and do anything,” said Selectman Michael Krenesky, who was named custodian of the house in 2014.
Source: Company to salvage parts of historic home | Citizen’s News
The developers set their Los Angeles outpost for the NoMad hotel franchise in the former Bank of Italy, also from the 20s.
These buildings are, of course, compelling because you want to keep them alive and give people reasons to come see them, and certainly you can’t build them today; it wouldn’t be cost-effective. The art of it is finding buildings where you have a response that makes sense, because I always say: If you fight with the building, the building is gonna win.
Source: The Hospitality Industry Is Stepping Up to Reuse Historic Buildings
Nat Hyman, Allentown developer and former mayoral candidate, sued the state Department of General Services in an attempt to prevent it from demolishing the Allentown State Hospital. (Kevin Mingora / The Morning Call)
Preservationists point to historic value, architectural beauty and potential repurposing in their effort to save the property from demolition. More than 5,000 people have signed an online petition to preserve the buildings.
Source: Developer Nat Hyman sues state to stop Allentown State Hospital demolition – The Morning Call
The scheduled demolition of this carriage house in Morristown’s Historic District has spurred an anti-demolition ordinance. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Residents and town officials were alarmed in February by a pair of knockdowns of historic mansions in Montclair, where a Turkish billionaire aimed to erect a mega-mansion to rival Mar-A-Lago.
Source: Morristown hopes to slow tear-downs with anti-demolition ordinance | Morristown Green
“Where I’m from in Kentucky, there’s a lumber mill that buys barn wood now, and they have a sign out front saying that anyone caught selling them stolen barn wood will be prosecuted. […]
Source: Is “farmhouse chic” causing thefts from old buildings and barns?
9 Factory St. is due for demolition in mid-June. Photo by Terry Smith.
“We’re focusing on iconic aspects of the Factory Street building, and repurposing materials where it makes sense to capture that building’s character as part of the new construction,” Ken Johnson, D.O., executive dean of the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in the release. “We have found some beautiful and creative ways to honor 9 Factory St. in the new facility’s café,” added Johnson, who also serves as OU’s chief medical affairs officer.
Source: New medical school cafe to honor Factory St. building | Campus News | athensnews.com
Cecilie Rohwedder for The Wall Street Journal
In an orange dumpster one recent Sunday morning, between old bricks and trash bags, Heather Olsen struck gold: rustic wood beams that once held the floor of a 100-year-old house.
When Ann and Corey Limbaugh renovated the attic of their home in Seattle four years ago, she spent weeks calling local lumberyards for pre-used wood. Eventually, she found one that had just received boards from an old building in Idaho. She was told to hurry because they wouldn’t be there for long.
Source: Old Wood Can Cost More Than New Lumber. People Want It Anyway. | realtor.com®
“We have all this wood,” he said. “What else are we going to do with it?”
Source: “Sawstainability” In Action At Wake Forest – Old Gold & Black
Great Lakes Brewing Company
Image blending an image from the late 1970s or early 1980s showing the site of the GLBC facility. The current brewpub, in color, is overlaid on top of the original property, which is in black and white. Interestingly, the Lloyd & Keys advertisement on the wall is still visible today, something GLBC’s Pat Conway always references as a “meaningful coincidence.”
But as in many areas across the country, Ohio City is a prime example of craft breweries helping spur redevelopment of various pockets of Northeast Ohio by breathing new life into neighborhoods and repurposing old buildings that have sat empty for years.
Lyrin Murphy
The once-majestic house was open during the Architectural Heritage Center’s Old House Revival Tour on Saturday, April 13.
The abandoned Jacob H. Cook mansion near Mount Tabor in southeast Portland was ripe to be ripped down. Instead, new owners Lyrin Murphy and Steve Day have carefully started to restore much of the oak woodwork, porcelain tile and tub, and the kitchen of the pre-1890s house.
Source: Saving a vandalized, historic home near Mount Tabor (photos, video) | OregonLive.com
“I’m more interested in diving a bit deeper, understanding the real history behind these abandoned spaces, and understanding how a ruin can be preserved and transformed into something altogether new. And I’m interested in the people behind these efforts, which are never easy—going well beyond the developers and architects that tend to get most of the credit.”
Source: Interview: Dan Barasch on Ruin and Redemption in Architecture – COOL HUNTING
Zulkarnain Saidin poses with pipes that he made in his home in Chemor, Perak April 1, 2019. — Pictures by Farhan Najib
Zulkarnain started making pipes about four years ago and he has made about 500 pipes, with half of them from the wood which are considered as waste.
Source: This pipe maker is giving wood a new lease of life by turning them into pipes | Life | Malay Mail
Rather than demolishing blighted buildings, the city is helping fund nonprofits that take the buildings apart piece by piece—then resell the parts, which still have significant value in construction.
Source: How Baltimore Is Deconstructing Itself—With Local Nonprofit Help: Associations Now
Nowhere to go but down: Making room for an in-ground pool at 48-50 West 69th Street in Manhattan.CreditCreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times
Antique fixtures restored or installed only a few years back in No. 48 were destroyed during the demolition, while the Japanese pagoda tree in front was chopped down to make way for construction machinery. (It cost the owners $16,000, payable to the Parks Department, to do so.)
The Ottawa Antique & Vintage Market was held at Carleton University Saturday April 6, 2019. Brian Killeen’s Vint-Age Steampunk Industrial Lamps. ASHLEY FRASER / POSTMEDIA
“Riding down the back roads saving the past,” Killeen said with a twinkle in his eye. “I find all kinds of things.” Killeen’s Vint-Age Lamp lighting has now been shipped to customers across the United States and Europe and an imposing creation made a Royal Electric Company of Montreal gauge sits in the Parliament Hill office of his local MP.
Source: Firefighter’s steampunk lamps among antique and vintage show treasures | Ottawa Citizen
Waterstone Properties Group, will transform the old Blue Rock Quarry near the town of Westbrook, Maine, into a 2-million-square foot mixed use village. Wakefield Beasley & Associates, courtesy of Waterstone Properties Group
Rock Row, a project of Waterstone Properties Group, will transform the old Blue Rock Quarry near the town of Westbrook, Maine, into a 2-million-square foot mixed use village including a temporary amphitheater, retail space, and a 25,000-square-foot beer hall.
Source: Rock Row: Gravel quarry in Portland, Maine, getting second life as walkable urban village – Curbed
Douglas fir steps with amphitheater seating ascend from the entry to the cafeteria. Photography by Connie Zhou.
Google and ZGF Architects had already worked together on six projects, but this would be the largest effort that either had ever undertaken in the realm of adaptive reuse. “The outcome was unknown when we embarked on the project,” Google project executive R.G. Kahoe says. “But we knew we could do something amazing, a moon-shot idea, as well as being the correct stewards for the building.”
Source: Google’s New LA Office Takes Flight Thanks to Hangar Transformation by ZGF Architects
All photos courtesy of Timeless Travel Trailers
In 1989, Union Pacific Railroad acquired Western Pacific, and for the first time in 27 years, the unique trailers were dismounted from their flatcars. Some of the 40-foot trailers were destroyed, some went to railroad museums in California, and others were auctioned. Only five trailers are in public possession, including one belonging to a private owner who asked Timeless Travel Trailers to restore it with the 1950s and 1960s in mind.
Source: Airstream renovated into midcentury modern dream – Curbed
In the words of Oak Park’s Stephen J. Kelly, a historic preservation specialist, “Will we continue to watch as pollution-spouting equipment turns usable buildings to rubble; more polluting equipment hauls away discarded building materials — concrete, brick, metal and glass — into a landfill to be abandoned?
Source: Development with preservation | Articles | News | OakPark.com
In addition to that, make sure you’re deconstructing your home during a renovation instead of demolishing it. This ensures that some materials in your home can be repurposed instead of being thrown out as waste. You can sell or donate your deconstructed items and help another person make a sustainable choice by upcycling them.
For example, in the summer of 2012, Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts) deconstructed two small wood-frame buildings and, in the process, recycled 92 percent, by weight, of the total material removed from the project site. The Williams small building deconstruction resulted in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to removing 14 cars from the roads for a full year (66 metric tonnes).
By volume, the most widely used acoustic material is traditional fiberglass or molten rock materials. Once retired or demolished, these materials are nearly 100-percent disposed of as trash and put into landfills. Despite their obvious recyclability, there is no mechanism or infrastructure to process and reuse these materials. Consequently, none of them are recycled post-use nor made into new products.
Source: Recyclability of Acoustics
The Victorian summer home on the West Cape May Bridge. The first floor of the house was moved Thursday, starting at the EHT storage yard, and moving down through Cape May, over a four-hour journey. March 14, 2019.
What was once one of the oldest homes in Avalon was being moved from an Egg Harbor Township storage yard to the Victorian shore town, a four-hour-long journey taken on by a South Jersey moving company and seven law-enforcement departments.
Associated Press
Deforestation in the tropics has led to protests all over the globe, including this one in Germany. (AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach)
Four years of investigation into the illegal timber trade in West Africa led an environmental group to the doorstep of Roseburg Forest Products, one of the Oregon’s largest and oldest timber companies.
Nomad Pizza (Princeton, New Jersey) Photo: Courtesy of Nomad Pizza/Michael Slack
These venues are not only serving great food but they also are retaining much of their original gas station architecture, too.
Source: These are America’s 7 Most Beautiful Gas Station Conversions – Architectural Digest
KOREY NOLAN
Korey Nolan built an award-winning surfboard made from Dunkin’ foam cups.
Nolan, who has been surfing for about a decade, said he was inspired to build the board for the California-based Creators & Innovators Upcycle Contest, an international competition that calls on contestants to repurpose waste by turning it into something that can be used in the ocean.
Source: This New Hampshire resident built a surfboard out of 700 foam Dunkin’ coffee cups – The Boston Globe
The family-owned Silver Oak Cellars winery was established in 1972 and has since become world-renowned for its award-winning Cabernet Sauvignon.
Tucked into the rolling hills of Alexander Valley, the solar-powered Silver Oak winery design, which was made with repurposed materials, has already earned a LEED-Platinum certification and is on track to become the one of the world’s most sustainable wineries.
Source: This gorgeous LEED Platinum winery is made of reclaimed wood
VETERAN ARCHITECT: BRIAN HOGAN
“The building was gone.” He had unwittingly become a member of the “rubble club”. This is the tongue-in-cheek term coined in architectural circles to describe a relatively recent phenomenon – the fact that older architects are now outliving many of their own buildings. And in Hogan’s case, the toll of demolition has become relentlessly repetitive as more and more of his work is cleared away, to make room for bigger, contemporary office blocks.
Source: The rubble club: An Irish architect watches his life’s work disappear
A family home was remodelled by the team at Retrouvius – the reclaimed flooring was specifically designed for hosting cocktail parties.
Some 26 years later, they now rule the roost of the London salvage scene, with both a warehouse trove of reclaimed products and a design studio that specialises in refurbishing top-end properties using rescued materials in a modern context.
The Spanish Colonial Revival-style structure. Rag & Bone blog
A few months ago, North Carolina-based developer Grubb Properties demolished the old Grant Park School, a Spanish Colonial Revival-style structure built in 1930.
Source: In Atlanta’s Grant Park, 1930 school razed for luxury apartments, townhomes – Curbed Atlanta
Designer and architect Patricia Urquiola speaking at the 2019 Fortune Brainstorm Design conference in Singapore.
“If we use a material that has been used before to make something new, we have to add value to that new material.”
Source: For One Designer, the Materials Are the Message | Fortune
© Strands of History
Where do bridges go when they die? Or more specifically, where do the pieces of large infrastructure go when they get demolished or repaired? Well, one company is finding one intriguing way to recycle old, discarded scrap cables from San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge — by incorporating them into elegant and timeless pieces of furniture.
Source: Elegant furniture made with discarded cables from Golden Gate Bridge | TreeHugger
JACKIE MEIRING
The beams featured in this photo are originally from a Wellington wharf.
It’s not just for the sake of the environment but it also gives homeowners a chance to think outside the box when furnishing or renovating to make a home that extra bit special.
Source: Sustainable style: Is old timber best? | Stuff.co.nz
Hydraulic shears takes down part of the old ACRA building for the new Aspen city offices on March 6.
Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times
“We had a goal of 65 percent for diversion and we are at 74 percent,” said Brain Thomas, the project manager for Shaw Construction. “We are happy with Aspen Deconstruction. They knocked it out of the park.”
Source: Construction debris to make way for Aspen government office mostly avoids landfill | AspenTimes.com
The sustainable installation is the winner of the 2019 City of Dreams competition. (Courtesy Somewhere Studio)
“Even though it’s a raw material that’s basically used for storage, it looks and behaves like processed cross-laminated timber,” he said. “When we began the project, it occurred to us that we had this big pile of wood staring at us that would otherwise be thrown away, so we decided we wanted to show off its quality and strength.”
Source: Somewhere Studio uses reclaimed CLT for 2019 City of Dreams pavilion – Archpaper.com
Dating back to 1910, the building rises 12 storeys and encompasses just over 126,000 square feet (11,706 square metres).
The team sought to preserve original elements where possible, such as high ceilings, wooden flooring and ornate detailing.
Source: Fogarty Finger revamps New York office with glass and cosy wood
[Photo: Stijn Bollaert/courtesy Civic Architects]
The design is an extraordinary example of adaptive reuse, transforming a decaying industrial building for constructing and storing trains into a place for learning and storing books–while retaining the existing industrial materials, flaws and all.
The building housing trains in 1939. [Photo: courtesy Civic Architects]
Source: LocHal is a gorgeous library in an old train warehouse
Wooden Ya Know It, was founded on the idea that just because it’s old or used, doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful. Old, reclaimed wood and materials have more character and can be much more beautiful than new materials. Handmade architectural elements and furniture crafted with reclaimed materials, reflects what is lost in this day of machine made, cookie cutter home decor and furniture. It also cuts across architectural style to reflect your taste and design from the rustic to the contemporary. Our Goal
Photo by Melissa Romero
It would also mark the latest of Furness’s works to be eradicated. Since the architect’s death in 1912, many of his Philly-based buildings fell into disrepair, and faced the wrecking ball—largely over the first half of the 20th Century.
Source: Frank Furness-designed South Philly church on track for demolition – Curbed Philly
“The reuse industry needs to continue building more circular economy partnerships to repurpose reclaimed materials on a larger scale, “ Goodman says.
Source: The salvageable lifecycle – Living Building Chronicle
The 26,000 pound chiller has been donated to Friends of Charlottesville Ice Park, a nonprofit working toward creating a new rink in Brookhill, a mixed-use development set to be built along U.S. 29 at Polo Grounds Road. Along with the refurbished chiller, ice park equipment, such as lighting bleachers and commercial kitchen equipment also will be repurposed, according to a news release.
Source: Chiller removed from former Main Street Arena • Charlottesville Tomorrow
The theft was spread on social media, and officers started investigating possible locations of the items. The fixtures were eventually located at West End Architectural Salvage in Des Moines. The light fixtures were retrieved, and the owner of the store identified the seller as McGinn. He was paid $350 for each item. “The owner of the store appraised the light fixtures at $2,000,” the police report said.
Source: Man pleads guilty to stealing antique fixtures at Capitol II Theatre | Newton Daily News
Exterior of the Stehli Silk Mill off Martha Avenue. LNP Photo
“People are under a misconception that the property is run down. That’s not the case. The bones are solid. The roof was 100 percent replaced,” he said.
This bar counter at Hoppy Daze brewpub in Otay Mesa West was constructed from upcycled bowling alley lanes from the former Vista Entertainment Center, through a program to recycle construction materials. (Bruce DeMoss, Hoppy Daze)
“It was actually better than I envisioned,” he said. “When we were building it, we were like every day, this is going to be cool. It ended up above our expectations. We built it so that it was all re-purposed everything.”
Source: From bowling alley to brewpub, recycled lumber gets new life – The San Diego Union-Tribune
Fulshear City Council voted to demolish the Switch House on FM 359 and salvage the materials for a future project. (Courtesy city of Fulshear)
“No one wanted this end result,” Assistant City Manager Brant Gary said. “But the results from the architect’s review, the current condition and the fact that that it had been converted into a more modern home. All of those things added to the decision-making process.”
Source: City of Fulshear to demolish Switch House, salvage materials | Community Impact Newspaper