Meanwhile, the ordinance’s continued suspension provides more time to develop a market for materials recycled from deconstructed houses. Selling those materials helps reduce the higher cost of deconstruction.
Source: Milwaukee extends freeze on requirement to dismantle old houses
Photo: The Architectural Team’s Bob Verrier has designed more than 50 award-winning historic buildings and preserved the architectural heritage of hundreds of historic structures across the country.
“The idea of restoring and bringing a building back to usefulness is very rewarding,” he says. “A new building is a new building, but restoring a historic building, it gives more energy. It’s like taking something that’s not being used, something that was very functional at one time, and now you bring it back to life. That’s what you’re doing: breathing new life into old bones.”
Source: Bob Verrier Champions Historic Renovation and Adaptive Reuse
PHOTO: Australian Red Cross Head of Retail Richard Wood says about 6,000 kilograms of textiles go into landfill every 10 minutes. (ABC Capricornia: Paul Robinson)
“That is trying to get the product to its original fibre content and to be able to repurpose it into other materials, potentially things like building materials.
Buildings that previously housed banks tend to be popular as they already have secure structures that comply with the cannabis industry’s unique security provisions – including vaults, safes, blocked-off areas and advanced security systems – in turn requiring less of an investment from the operator to implement these requirements.
Source: Adaptive Reuse is the Future of Cannabis Retail | GlobeSt
The National Association of Home Builders reports that 58,600 houses were removed from their lots in 2017 to make way for newer, almost always larger, houses. Many of them were obsolete places that nobody wanted, and the land under most was probably more valuable than the houses themselves. But instead of being demolished, at least some could have been deconstructed: taken apart systematically so their parts could be reused.
Source: Let’s Stop the Demolition Derby – Banker & Tradesman
Image: Photo of two metal circles on metal stands filled with multicolored resin and automative paint starbursts planted outside the artist’s studio like flowers. Photo by Debra Domal
These human-made flowers, grown from repurposed materials, seem perfectly at home in nature.
Source: Meet local 3D artist Gregory Stallmeyer : Arts : Smile Politely
Image: author provided.
Advanced sensors and AI that can detect quickly and determine accurately what can be used among CDW and efficient robotic sorting could aid circular construction by vastly improving the recycling of a wide range of materials. The focus should be on the smart dismantling of buildings and ways of optimising cost-effective processes.
Source: Here’s how we can recycle more buildings | CityMetric
55 Southbank Boulevard by Bates Smart. Image: Hume Partners Property
Bates Smart designed a 10 storey structure made from engineered timber that sits top of an existing office building in Melbourne’s Southbank. The Adina Apartment Hotel Melbourne Southbank is set to open later in 2020.
Source: Tallest timber adaptive reuse building set to open | ArchitectureAU
The living room of Cathy Ehrler and Donald Thurman’s converted warehouse home is light and open, with high ceilings and windows lining the walls.
“I’m really into reuse and recycling — and I’ve been that way all my life — and one of the reasons that I loved this space is that we are reusing space in an old building,” said Cathy, “and we used as much as the original as possible.”
“We had the view for a very long time to think about the construction of developing and repurposing buildings from the view of what is the anticipated life of the building and ask ‘am I building this in a way that makes sense for the intended use?’” Anderson said.
Source: Construction Industry Weighs Building Lifespan to Fight Climate Change | GlobeSt
“We are working on preserving as much as we can that’s in the mill itself,” said Derek Morton the Garfield Township Park Steward. “It’s in rough shape right now, but we want to work with the family now that we know Jack’s around and has a lot of interest in it.”
Source: Traverse City man wants to salvage a piece of his history: The “Old Franke Mill” | WPBN
Jenni and Andy Wilson’s move to a 1923 Tudor Revival on South Edisto was, for Jenni, a dream come true. Marrying old and new architecture with a classic cottage feel, the renovation is masterful. The 100 to 200 year old reclaimed French terracotta floor tiles in the kitchen are the pièces de résistance, and the ILVE Italian 48-inch black enameled range with brass claw feet is a much used and loved focal point.
The island is made from reclaimed heart pine from the house.
Source: Sweet Olive Cottage – Columbia Metropolitan Magazine
“In a demolition project, the entire building is demolished and wrecked,” said Olivia Cashman, construction and waste specialist with Hennepin County. “Whereas in a deconstruction project, the building is taken a part and it’s typically by hand so that process typically takes a lot more labor and time.”
Source: Hennepin County Encourages Deconstructing, Not Demolishing Through Grants – CCX Media
Put simply, logging is not a carbon solution. All told, the logging industry is the largest fossil fuel emitter in our state. In 2016, the Oregon Global Warming Commission reported that the wood products sector itself contributed 50% more pollution than the transportation and energy sector combined.
Heather’s wood art and furniture is truly made from Portland, utilizing found wood and materials from deconstructed or abandoned homes in the Portland area. She incorporates recognizable reclaimed wood pieces such as lath, decorative edging and moulding into one-of-a-kind designs.
This article explores how heritage values can be productively sustained or transformed by processes of building deconstruction and materials reuse, which address the increasing magnitude of demolition waste, landfill and resource use in urban development. The article starts by examining literature in heritage studies, sustainable building, and discard studies, then presents two examples from Vancouver, a Canadian city under intense development pressure, to help frame questions from project and policy contex
Illustrations: Above, the symbol for the Embedawatt, as envisioned by AARCH staff; and below a Medium Sized House Energy Chart courtesy of Jerry Jenkins (from Climate Change in the Adirondacks).
Assuming the new house is more energy efficient than an existing house, it still takes an average of 40 years for an energy efficient new house to recover the energy and carbon expended in the construction of the house (Empty Homes Agency, 2008).
Source: Embedawatt: Valuing What We Have – – The Adirondack Almanack
079.00 Re.Wind Camping 15 photos · 1,807 views By: Superuse Studios
Presented in a handblown Waterford Crystal decanter and displayed in a wooden cabinet made from reclaimed whiskey vats, there are just 48 bottles in the world. The price tag for this rare wonder is $40,000.
Source: What the world’s most expensive Irish whiskey tastes like | CNN Travel
Hennepin County has a total of about $100,000 in deconstruction grants available for 2020.
Source: Hennepin County offering ‘Green Grants’ to help with cost of deconstruction | KSTP.com
“It requires a fundamental shift in our attitude to materials.”
Source: What if we never demolished another building? | News | Archinect
IMAGE: Mick Hangland-Skill
“The way I describe it is that it’s ‘radically accessible,'” he says. “All you need to be able to do is hear and talk.” Through grants, Anderson has expanded Futel to 10 booths in Portland, as well as Detroit and Ypsilanti, Mich., and Seaview, Wash., using hardware salvaged from Craigslist.
Source: A Portland Software Engineer Is Bringing the Pay Phone Back, Minus the “Pay” Part – Willamette Week
A stylish pair of Concorde cufflinks, casted using metal from the air intake assembly of Concorde 101
Credit: ASID
Excess tabletops from the old office were cut to make adjustable shelving in the gallery wall, and millwork was reused in the print and model shop rooms. Overall, 16% of the total material cost for the project was salvaged and repurposed from the old office. 68% of the furniture was also reused (amounting to $100,000 savings).
Source: Perkins and Will StudioIDS Office Shows the Impact of Adaptive Reuse
WNEP
“After our demolition contractor started pulling the outsides of the building off, (we) discovered there was a log cabin in there,” said council president Frank Dombroski.
IMAGE: Mick Hangland-Skill.
New owners Eastbank Development are planning to raze the site and turn it into apartments—but before doing so, they offered it to the nonprofit Portland Street Art Alliance to use as a canvas. Since last spring, more than 50 artists have contributed to the project, covering all four of the building’s outer walls with cows, bears, Sasquatches and hyper-bright 3-D lettering.
Source: Portland Street Artists Turned a Doomed Building Into a Temporary Work of Art – Willamette Week
Pixidermy Where pixelation & taxidermy meet. Future of sculpture.
Source: Where pixelation & taxidermy meet. Future of by Pixidermy on Etsy
“Great architecture has only two natural enemies,” said Nickel. “Water and stupid men.”
Hundreds of people have been mourning the butterfly activists. AFP
Mr Gómez’s body was found in a well on 29 January. His family said that prior to his disappearance, the activist had received threats warning him to stop his campaign against illegal logging.
Source: Second Mexico monarch butterfly activist found dead – BBC News
The new visitor’s center.
The wood cladding is made from reclaimed redwood wine tank staves, an homage to the origins of winemaking in Napa, and custom light fixtures are also made from staves of retired Cakebread casks.
Source: Cakebread Debuts a Sustainable and Gorgeous New Winery – Robb Report
PHOTO: CLARA HOWELL – Workers have started building vertical on the new City Hall building.
Redevelopment Manager Sidaro Sin said contractors were able to recycle 90% of the two existing buildings — a former medical office and doggy day care — that were on the property where the new City Hall is being built. That was about 15% more than the contractors’ original goal.
Source: Pamplin Media Group – A sustainable teardown in Lake Oswego
Sara Morel, founder of Reclaimed Woman
One foot in fashion, one foot in salvage, often up to my knees in reclaimed building materials, but refusing to part with my knee-high boots, whilst dancing in mud with reclaimed radiators from the roaring 20s.
A 2017 UN Environment report estimated the building sector contributes 49 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions thus making it the single largest contributor to climate change. Globally, building operations account for 28 percent of GHG emissions and the embodied carbon of building materials–the emissions generated in the production, transport, and assembly of materials such as wood, concrete, and steel–accounts for another 11 percent.
Source: Broaden the scope of of contractor education | Columnists | missoulian.com
Jeremiah Logemann rummages through a storage locker Friday to show off some of the parts from the St. Raphael steeple that he plans to turn into pieces of art. St. Raphael in Downtown Madison was destroyed by fire in 2005. Since its demolition in 2008, the steeple has been kept in a lot along East Washington Avenue, but Logemann assumed ownership of the spire in June when the Madison Diocese was looking for a way to dispose of the 18-ton structure. STEVE APPS/STATESMAN JOURNAL
“I’ve been busy as hell since that day. It’s kind of miraculous,” Logemann said. “There are a lot of people in Madison that either just want art to make their place look cooler or they like the story of the steeple or a barn or they’re philanthropists. It doesn’t matter where their heart is at. We’ve got the material and I have the drive to make it. We can make great public art all over this city.”
“We’re seeing these forests disappear overnight. It’s happening so fast, and there’s very little old growth left in this part of B.C. It’s an environmental crisis that’s no less tragic than the loss of coral reefs and tropical rainforests.”
Back at the beginning of the 1900s, Equihen Plage was known, as one of the best spots for fishing. As many boats were left to be destroyed on the shore, local fishermen used them as roofs for their handmade shelters. At the time, the area was called Quartier des Quilles en l’Air: the neighborhood of keels in the air.
Source: Equihen Plage: Village Of Upside Down Boat Houses – Unusual Places
One of the historical houses on E. Huron St. that could be demolished to make way for a new College of Pharmacy building. Natalie Stephens/Daily
“There haven’t been any proposals submitted to purchase, and if that remains to be the case, over the summer they would be demolished,” Broekhuizen said.
The Eberly occupies a 1970s brick building that formerly housed a print shop.
Source: Eclectic decor fills Eberly restaurant and tavern in central Austin
Half of the 100.6bn tonnes of materials were sand, clay, gravel and cement for building, plus minerals quarried for fertiliser. Photograph: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy
The lion’s share of the materials – 40% – is turned into housing.
Source: World’s consumption of materials hits record 100bn tonnes a year | Environment | The Guardian
PUSH Buffalo Executive Director Rahwa Ghirmatzion, center, with PUSH members and community advocates Luz Velez, left, and Providencia Carrion at the Wash Project. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)
She now oversees the organization’s programs and operations, which include housing construction, solar installation, job training and a youth center, in addition to advocacy efforts. PUSH employs 40, and has renovated more than 100 homes in the past seven years.
Source: Meet the ‘Renovators’: These people are breathing new life into Buffalo’s past – The Buffalo News
Worker removes plaster from a brick wall with a perforatorGETTY
If the salvageable material from deconstructing your house is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, you should not need to pay somebody to take the house apart so that you can give the pieces to charity. There should be people waving money in front of your face to come in and take it apart.
For about six months last year, the St. Louis Development Corporation hired workers to carefully take apart a former storage warehouse in the Vandeventer neighborhood and saved lumber, brick and other materials for reuse.
DAVID KOVALUK | ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO
“Each job is like a cadaver. You get to dissect the building, see how it was put together, how it worked, how it could fail,” Schwarz said. “And each job is different. You don’t always know going into it what exactly is going to be there.”
The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, at the University of British Columbia, showing off some timber. CIRS
Slabs of wood this large can match or exceed the performance of concrete and steel. CLT can be used to make floors, walls, ceilings — entire buildings. The world’s tallest mass timber structure, at 18 stories and over 280 feet, was recently built in Norway; there’s an 80-story wooden tower proposed for Chicago.
Source: Sustainable building: The hottest new material is, uh, wood – Vox
Deforestation is one factor contributing to unprecedented consumption of materials in recent years. (Photo: World Bank Photo Collection/Flickr/cc)
Half of the materials used each year are clay, gravel, sand, and other materials used for construction, and about 40% of the materials used are turned into housing—yet according to the Homeless World Cup Foundation, an estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless and as many as 1.6 billion people have inadequate housing.
Nearly 100 opponents of the proposed waste facility on Allens Avenue in Providence raise their hands in silent protest at the Jan. 21 meeting of the City Plan Commission. (Tim Faulkner/ecoRI News)
During the rally, City Council member Pedro Espinal described how the addition of about 200 trucks per day heading to and from the proposed waste-processing facility would impact the five schools in neighborhood. “This facility will only increase the pollution and contaminants of South Providence,” Espinal said.
Source: ‘Garbage Depot’ Protested at Canceled Public Hearing — ecoRI News
PHOTO: Mr Aitken says the main stairs are made with wood from a settler’s hut built in the 1880s. (ABC News: Anna Hartley)
The landscape architect, now 70, salvaged centuries-old stones and wooden beams from historical buildings, including the city’s courthouses, jails and flour mills which have since been lost.
ZGF partnered with Google to transform the landmark Spruce Goose Hangar in Playa Vista, California. A 450,000+ SF, four-level “building-within-a-building” was developed inside the seven-story, 750-foot-long historic wooden structure. Built by Howard Hughes in 1943 for the construction of the Hercules IV airplane (aka the “Spruce Goose”), the hangar now comprises office, meeting, food service and event spaces, and employee amenity spaces.
Source: Google, Spruce Goose | ZGF
Dismantling a historic barn is an exacting process, requiring weeks of logistical planning. Because the team hopes to repurpose every piece of wood, most work is done by hand, with the occasional support of heavy machinery. “The barn has its own plan,” says manager Anthony Saraceno. “There are always surprises.” Photo by Joe Polillio
Each salvage job is unique. In the case of Pitney Farm, a portion of the grounds is to be converted into a public park. Some of the salvaged wood was set aside to build benches for the park. Real Antique Wood will repurpose the rest. “I’ve probably made 25 mantels from the beams of that barn already,” says Anthony Saraceno, who manages the mill and Real Antique Wood.
Source: How an Irvington Company Salvaged a Century-Old Barn | NJ Monthly
Photos by Mike Chassie
Roughly 80% of the plastic recyclables collected throughout Halifax, Nova Scotia are now being processed by Goodwood Plastic Products Ltd so they can be turned into building blocks.
Source: Company Collects 80% of City’s Recyclable Plastics and Turns It All into Lumber
If the research pans out, it would allow future astronauts to construct off-world settlements without needing to carry expensive, heavy building materials with them all the way from Earth — a game-changer in the plan to colonize space.