Architect Andrew Franz used reclaimed timber extensively in this renovation of a loft apartment in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, transforming a small space into a bright and comfortable home for four.
A growing number of designers, architects, and builders are catching on to the goldmine that is construction waste, and have started recycling wood, plastic, and metal, and upcycling rubble to create entirely new materials for use in home design.
Akin Studio won the AJ Small Projects Award 2022 last week for its ‘treehouse’ in rural Herefordshire.
Have you learned anything in terms of materials on this project that you might use on other schemes? The clients are incredibly resourceful, and we learnt to embrace reclaimed materials, as well as the importance of reuse and considering the afterlife of building components. In the case of Drovers’ Bough, the exposed structural elements are all carefully bolted together allowing for future disassembly or replacement, and many parts of the project were made from surplus materials or reclaimed products.
Source: AJ Small Projects winner: How Akin Studio designed its treehouse on stilts
CREDIT: EMILY GREEN; SQFT NASHVILLE
“We have used materials in every room, but the main area seems to be the kitchen,” she says, noting walnut as a popular choice for kitchen island tops. “As this is the main room people always seem to congregate in, reclaimed materials serve as conversation starters.”
Designed by Nordhavn-based Lendager Group, the Holiday Cabin consists of five connected structures, all of which are constructed from upcycled waste materials found from demolition sites and local factories.
Source: Upcycled materials make up this beautiful cabin retreat in Denmark
The castle’s exterior mixes architectural styles, including 13th-century French Gothic. / Photo by Michele Snow
He scoured Europe for architectural salvage, buying up archways, façades, windows, and wall panels from the rubble of World War I. These centuries-old artifacts were incorporated alongside new construction materials (including wood intentionally weathered with seawater for an old-timey look). The result so impressed John D. Rockefeller, an avid art collector, that the tycoon used it as a model for the Cloisters in New York—the only museum in the United States to exclusively showcase art from the Middle Ages
Source: Eccentric Inventor John Hays Hammond Jr. Built A Castle in Gloucester
The Brewster-Wheeler recreation center [left] provided the maple wood for the Brewster Wheeler guitar.
“One of my favorite sources for the wood is the Brewster-Wheeler Recreation Center,” said Wallace, 41. The rec center was located right next to the housing projects where Diana Ross once lived. She and The Supremes were known to hang out there, he said. Wallace harvested maple from the center’s benches to create his Brewster Wheeler series of guitars. Another line, called the Cadillac Stamping collection, is made from wood reclaimed from a former auto parts plant.
Source: He turns wood from Detroit’s vacant buildings into beautiful guitars
Kathy Jackson Bosley found inspiration for the arched entrance in a fine home magazine. The reclaimed pilasters between the doors are cast iron and weigh over 1,000 pounds. Note the detail in the ceiling. Travertine is used on the floor. The fountain was created from three separate pieces, all reclaimed. Rita LeBleu
The American Press has never visited a house that demonstrates so much attention to detail and creative use of reclaimed or salvaged building materials, including old world European architectural elements.
Source: Masterpiece-by-piece | Real Estate | americanpress.com
Wallace looks for salvageable lumber amongst Detroit blight and turns it into guitars. (Photo: Courtesy Mark Wallace)
Wallace Detroit Guitars founder Mark Wallace says “Chevrolet is a foundational element in the story of Detroit.” He says using the wood was an attractive opportunity for a “company that honors the history of Detroit in every instrument we make.” Plus, he says, the maple is “gorgeous” and provides a sound “unlike any other instrument.”
Source: Wood from Chevrolet plant going into Detroit-made guitars
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The eclectic-looking Scavenger Studio was made from reclaimed materials. Photos by Ben Benscheider via Designboom
This modern cabin in Puget Sound, Washington, incorporates a hodgepodge of reclaimed materials from homes about to be demolished, creating an eclectic forest retreat that is anything but ordinary.
Source: Modern cabin made from reclaimed materials frames lush forest views – Curbed
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The Saffron Fields Vineyard in Oregon. Courtesy of Saffron Fields Vineyard
Designed by architect Richard Shugar of 2Form Architecture, this tasting room in Oregon was completed in 2013. Originally on the site of a dairy farm, the winery’s new building uses reclaimed materials from the old barn and sits on a hill with panoramic views. A small patio cantilevers over a pond that laps against the south side of the building, and guests can enjoy wine on the expansive patio. Sloping roof planes extend from the building and also allow rainwater runoff to be collected for irrigation and to fill up the adjacent pond.
Community Forklift and its CEO Nancy J. Meyer won a SHINE Award from eBay in the Charitable Business category. Photo courtesy of Community Forklift
Community Forklift is a nonprofit reuse center for building materials, architectural salvage and antiques. The name refers to the organization’s mission “to lift up communities” in the DC area by turning the region’s construction waste stream into a resource stream. “These prizes will help us reach a larger online audience, which means we can do more good here in the DC region!” Meyer wrote on a blog post. “We can keep more materials out of landfills, provide more free materials to neighbors in need, and offer more green jobs to local residents.”
Mary Reese hunts for tile at the new Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Gresham.
Jacobson compares shopping for salvaged building materials to thrift or vintage shopping, and advises shopping early and often. “Stock changes from day to day and quantities can be limited,” he says. “The list of stores is growing and that makes it easier to find what you need, but the region’s supply chain for used building materials is still a work in progress” Also, he says, find a contractor willing to work with you, one who’s willing to deconstruct and salvage materials, as well as incorporate reused items into the new space.
Source: Something old, something new. (Re)using salvaged building materials | Metro
The Barclays Center opted for a variety of green features. Credit: Adam E. Moreira
Arena designers also repurposed construction materials from the structures that were demolished to make way for the Kings’ new home, resulting in more than one-third of the new building’s material recycled from the old ones. Designers even used recycled athletic shoes for the court surfaces.
Source: Going green: What’s in it for sports venue owners? | Construction Dive
Mark Wallace of Wallace Detroit Guitars
The reclaimed wood used to build Wallace Detroit Guitars — salvaged from buildings in the Motor City — dates as far back as the early 1800s. The handmade guitars are therefore being built with the same vintage, slow-growth wood as instruments made in the golden era of the 1920s, said Wallace Detroit Guitars founder Mark Wallace. “That wood went into guitars, and my wood went into houses,” Wallace said during an interview at Architectural Salvage Warehouse, the nonprofit where he sources maple, ash, walnut and pine. “There’s something fundamentally different about the wood that went into those [vintage] guitars, and that’s what I’m tapping into.”
Source: Wallace Detroit Guitars Use Reclaimed Motor City Wood For A ‘Cadillac’ Sound | Benzinga
Preston Browning, owner of Salvage Works, with some deconstructed lumber. (Salvage Works)
“You see on really the earliest barns all hand-hewn beams, very rustic, very beautiful well-aged material,” Browning said. “We sell a lot to contractors and fabricators who are building the interiors of restaurants and bars, coffee shops, offices, that sort of thing.” Anyone who’s been in a recently remodeled or newly built bar or restaurant in Portland has likely seen the kind of wood that fills Salvage Works’ 25,000 square foot complex. The deconstruction ordinance — and plenty of deteriorating barns — will keep them and Salvage Works in old wood for years to come. “It provides jobs, it keeps material out of the landfill and really provides this amazing material that you just can’t find anymore,” Browning said of the ordinance.
Source: Turning old barns and deconstructed buildings in lumber gold: Salvage works | KCBY
We need your help to finish building out our shop in its new location. We share building space with Refab STL, an amazing non-profit providing skills training to former combat veterans by deconstructing old buildings in and around St. Louis. These materials are then processed and stored for resale in the historic 40,000 square foot building along Route 66, which houses Citizen Carpentry’s new workshop. Citizen Carpentry aims to be the first worker-owned woodworking co-operative of its kind in the Midwest, encouraging community members, artists, and entrepreneurs to utilize our shop for their work. We have the chance to be a hub of creative revitalization, recycling, and skill-sharing in a city sorely lacking in opportunities.
Source: Kickstarter Citizen Carpentry Community Workshop & Tool Share
For LEED certification, the scorecards include decisions made when building—such as the 49ers’ embrace of local public transit, use of recycled materials from the old Moffett Field and sourcing of material locally
Source: Host to Super Bowl 50, Levi’s Stadium is the sustainable arena of the future | SI.com
Bob Falk is a veteran building material reuse and deconstruction expert. One could say he wrote the book on how to salvage building materials. Unbuilding: Salvaging the Architectural treasures of unwanted Houses was released in 2007 as the first book taking you through the process of deconstructing a building. The topic was so new that the publishers had a hard time finding a category for it. To this day you can find Unbuilding in construction, green building, woodworking, waste diversion and other various places.
Bob has a PhD in engineering and works at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin as a Research Engineer. Bob has published extensively on the recycling and reuse of wood materials.
Bob shares his house remodel progress below.
“My daughter Abby helping me lay radiant tubing in my new woodshop. Blue foam insulation is salvaged.
Reclaimed steel framework for garage…from an old coal plant. I designed and welded up all the components.
“The use of the reclaimed concrete blocks is an experiment in harnessing the thousands of tonnes of concrete that goes to waste each year,” said Chris. “Each block is a byproduct of excess concrete left in trucks, poured into rough steel troughs.”
via Sawmill House by Archier is built on an Australian gold mine.
We are a social entrepreneurship that focuses on using materials gathered from illegal dumping sites throughout Detroit. Our city has many problems facing it, and illegal dumping is one that hasn’t seen much action. We comb the city by bike in search of illegal dumping sites.
via Woodward Throwbacks.
BOB PERKOSKI
He’s come full circle with his business, which produces customized furniture made of reclaimed materials in an old elevator factory on East 36th Street. Not only is he finding new uses for goods that would have been thrown away, but he’s revitalizing Cleveland’s manufacturing past.
All Rustbelt Reclamation furniture is made by a crew of about 20 people right in Cleveland. And many of the pieces are created with floorboards harvested from now-closed factories where people who helped build the city, the region and the country once stood and worked.
“Wow, all of that was going to be in the landfill, and now it’s not.'”
via Rustbelt Reclamation brings new life to salvaged materials.
And the new materials that he introduced are either salvaged or left raw.
via Super Whatnot: An Urban Hotspot That’s an Extension of the Street: Remodelista.
Since 2011 the RA has been a primary site for news and research on building material waste prevention. Posts on projects, programs, policy, people and the amazing progress made in reclaiming beautiful materials from going to waste!
The building material reuse community is a thriving growing industry of professionals and policy-makers who are changing the world for the better! The Reclamation Administration is uniting this diverse community through daily news.
This free site needs capital to evolve. We need $5,000 for:
If the funding goal isn’t reached, The Reclamation Administration will continue to provide these services but at a much slower pace. There is a high demand for inspirational news on reclaimed building materials – and we want to answer the call!
The RA is an ongoing source of inspiration for design, policy, collaboration, business, environmental issues, job creation, and education. The RA features daily information highlighting the “Triple Bottom Line” model of sustainability. The RA provides daily news that People, Planet, and Profit are synergistic when reclaiming building materials.
Over 100,000 people have visited the RA since it’s creation with an average of 100 new visitors a day. Over 400 readers are dedicated followers.
The RA has been operating as a blog for over three years. The new funds will go to registering The Reclamation Administration as a LLC. The RA is a Social Entrepreneurship – a business with a mission and we have a lot more to learn!
Here’s what we have so far:
If you can’t contribute financially send us your news instead! We are always looking to spread the word and hear people’s stories on reuse. Send our campaign to someone you know, take a moment to pass it on – thank you.
The 1915 building once was a former tavern house, appropriate for its latest incarnation. Construction will include reclaimed wood from a nearby home that dates to the 1880s. The part of the building that will house the brewery has a barn-like look to it, with high wooden strips forming the rafters. And in a neat homage to the past, bricks were salvaged from a former Forest City Brewery.
via Forest City Brewery embraces history as it sets to open in Cleveland | cleveland.com.
First Regiment Armory Annex, built in 1891 in Portland
Points are awarded for salvaging and reusing materials deconstructed from the original building and for careful waste management during construction; in this case, 95 percent of the materials involved in the project were recycled.
First Regiment Armory Annex, built in 1891 in Portland
via Redlands Conservancy visits adaptively reused buildings in Portland.
“I’m not Mr. Green or anything, but my parents grew up in the Depression, so there’s this element of ‘Hey, don’t throw that out and waste it,’ ” said Joyce, owner of Stockyards Brick, 4150 S. Packers Ave.
On Saturday, April 26th from 10am until 2pm ReStore staff and volunteers will be set up in Macy’s Northeast lot at Mayfair.
ReStore will be collecting donations of resalable as well as recyclable material. In addition to accepting donations of gently used furnishings and home goods, community members can donate clothing, shoes, toys, faulty or outdated electronics and computer equipment. ReStore works in partnership with licensed recycling partners to responsibly break down materials that cannot be resold, like computers. Proceeds from these recyclable materials, just like donations of resalable materials, go towards building homes, community and hope through Habitat for Humanity’s work in Milwaukee. As a bonus, all donors during the drive will receive special thank you gifts from ReStore and participating Mayfair businesses.
via Mayfair Donation Drive | Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity.
About 20 United Parcel Service employees are volunteering their off-hours to help remove countertops and cabinets that will be resold by Shop Demo Depot in Mt. Pleasant, a subsidiary of Westmoreland Community Action.
The four-story building contains reusable items ranging from ceramic tile to cabinets to bathroom fixtures.
Coolers in the building will be donated to the Westmoreland County Food Bank, said Jen Miele, Excela’s vice president of marketing and community relations.
Senior Vice President Ron Ott said reusing the materials will reduce landfill space while supporting Community Action.
“We are pleased to have such an outlet for items that still have value,” he said.
…
“This project is a perfect example of how businesses, nonprofits and communities can work together for the common good,” said Bobbi Watt Geer, president & CEO of United Way.
via Materials from Jeannette hospital’s demolition to help nonprofit | TribLIVE.
Advanced Community Enhancement, the building owner, partnered with Building Value (a local nonprofit building materials reuse center, deconstruction service and job training business of Easter Seals TriState), Rumpke Recycling, and the Uptown Consortium in the demolition of the 12,000-square-foot building in what was billed as an environmental event in that 90 percent of the building’s materials will be recycled. The Uptown Consortium and Sperry Van Ness-RICORE Investment Management coordinated the project the corner of Forest and Burnet avenues.
In addition to diverting the waste from the landfill, the project provides transitional employment opportunities through Building Value’s job training deconstruction program. The Building Value crew positions act as a bridge to move people with workforce disadvantages into careers in construction.
We posted about this once already – but this tour is so worth another visit!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32WtDb3c3ws?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]
Brian Schulz wanted to see “how small of a house I could make feel big”. Inspired by the traditional Japanese minka homes that rely on local materials and steeply sloped roofs to create affordable, open structures, Schulz created a home using materials salvaged or sourced from within 10 miles of his home.
via Zen forest house: 11K, handcrafted, small home in Oregon – YouTube.
News-Tribune photos/AARON LONDON
Bob Lacasse, owner of Flagler County Surplus & Salvage Building Materials in Bunnell, points out a 100-year-old door he recently acquired. Lacasse said more architects and builders are incorporating salvaged and surplus materials in their projects.
via Flagler County surplus and salvage shop aims to give builders options | News-JournalOnline.com.
All it takes to make one is a bit of faith, the willpower to disengage yourself from humanity’s torrid love affair with square footage, and in the case of this 70-square-foot nomadic living pod, about $2,000. All that and a cache of reclaimed materials was all that a class from Green Mountain College in Vermont needed to build the Optimal Traveling Independent Space, or OTIS.
via Reclaimed-Material Nomadic Pod Was Built for Under $2K – Micro Homes – Curbed National.
It took 45 tons of recycled steel and wood to put this beast together. Overall, the elephant is about 39 feet high and 26 feet wide. It was meant to be an approximate replica of The Sultan’s Elephant, a huge elephant sculpture created for the traveling French public art show of the same name.
via Pachyderm Perfection: Recycled Robotic Elephant | Gadgets, Science & Technology.
Photo via Co.Design
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the film, a group of local architects, sculptors, installation artists, and painters built the thing from reclaimed construction materials in one caffeine-filled 24-hour session, locking themselves in a warehouse and working from noon to noon to complete it.
via This Wizard of Oz House Was Assembled in Under a Day – Adaptive Reuse – Curbed National.
The former art teacher drew plans for the house on the back of an envelope. He didn’t need any special planning permissions since it was classified as a summer home. Buck spent two years gathering natural and reclaimed materials for construction. It took him an additional eight months to construct it with his bare hands; he didn’t use any power tools at all.
…
For the 300 sq. ft. floor space, Buck rescued the floorboards from a neighbor’s unused skip. He retrieved the windscreen of an old lorry and converted the glass into windows. The walls are painted with a mixture of chalk and plant resin. The roof is a simple wooden frame thatched with straw from nearby fields.
While the building is new — nestled within Tarrytown’s recently constructed Hudson Harbor condominium complex — reclaimed materials inside give the place a feeling of heritage.
The herringbone floor features maple planks from a demolished 200-year-old factory in upstate New York. Slanted slats along the ceiling made from deconstructed mushroom boxes are specially lit to highlight the roughed-up texture created by enzyme-rich soil. Oak “flavor sticks,” used to infuse large-vat Napa Valley wines, trim the restaurant’s walls and line the floor and ceiling of the wine shop next door. Wooden crates hold apples in the market and wine in the shop. A collapsible border of reclaimed wood-and-glass doors from Belgium enclose a private dining room.
via Dining Scene: RiverMarket Bar and Kitchen, Tarrytown | The Journal News | lohud.com | lohud.com.
Jim Hulce of Niagara Worldwide, Niagara, is helping lead the wood salvage project at the former Mirro plant in downtown Manitowoc. / Sue Pischke/HTR Media file
He estimates about one-third of 6 million board feet of northern hemlock will be salvageable for sale as a commodity on the wood market. “We have dozens of interested parties …we need people to stand up and make an order,” Spirtas said.
…
But without the demolition permit, city officials have prohibited crews from harvesting the century-old northern hemlock wood beams comprising the subfloor, as well as the steel beams and columns comprising the skeletal structure of the 900,000-square-foot building.
via Mirro building owner sees salvage value in wood, brick, steel | HTR Media | htrnews.com.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSGvBJEoNv8&feature=player_detailpage]
Dee Williams used to live in a 2,000-square-foot, 3-bedroom home. Then she traveled to Guatelama (to help build a schoolhouse) and when she came home her house felt too big so built herself a home that fit. That turned out to be a 84-square-foot foot home on wheels that cost her $10,000: $5000 for the materials (mostly salvaged) and the other half for the solar panels and low-E (low thermals emissivity) windows.
She spent 3 months building her new home in Portland, Oregon and then hitched it to her truck and parked it in the backyard of her good friends Hugh and Annie in Olympia, Washington. For the first 7 years she moved in and out (removing the back fence), but for the past two years her wheels haven’t moved.
via ▶ Micro-homesteading in WA with 10K microhome (84 sq ft) in friends’ yard – YouTube.
A HOBBITAT JUST FOR YOU!
Our passion is for small structures, thoughtfully designed using today’s technologies wrapped in reclaimed and repurposed materials. Our goal is to create healthy, energy efficient spaces that inspire living. Each of our Hobs are as individual as our clients, they each tell their own story and convey a style unique to their owner.
Cob and reclaimed building materials go hand in hand.
This is a great article in Mother Earth News in which they mention using reclaimed concrete (Urbinite) as a perfect material for cob building foundations.
Photo By Chris McClellan
Today, building your own house is the exception to the norm, and it is almost unheard of to build with local materials. Instead, houses are built by specialists using expensive tools and expensive, highly refined materials extracted and transported long distances, often at great ecological cost. Industrial materials have many benefits — performance, predictability, speed and ease of installation — but they have in common that they must create a profit for the companies that manufacture them. The average number of members in U.S. households has dropped by more than half in the past 50 years. Yet, over the same time period, average home sizes have more than doubled. We are more comfortably housed than at any point in history, but practically enslaved by the payments (the word “mortgage” is French for “death contract”). Fortunately, we have other choices.
via Cob Building Basics: DIY House of Earth and Straw – Green Homes – MOTHER EARTH NEWS.
His company, RK Construction, operates in the site’s Star Laundry building and salvages materials so they can be repurposed for new projects.
The Sept. 14 event aims to support this cause, with a portion of vendor fees benefiting Emergent Structures, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the sustainability of reclaimed materials.
“So it’s going straight back into the community itself,” Schwind said.
via Savannah Bazaar unites community, artists | savannahnow.com.
Photography by Shawn Records for project
The lobby and gallery in the new ArtHouse, a residence hall for the Pacific Northwest College of Art, feature reclaimed wood from Powell’s Technical Bookstore, which formerly occupied the building’s site.
Hill End Eco House, a 6 star energy rated sustainable home located in inner Brisbane, was constructed almost entirely with recycled materials from the house it replaced.
A TWO-WAY STREET: Nelson makes her old home more energy efficient by “interacting” with it. During the hottest months, she closes the shutters over the doors while leaving the slats open to keep the sun at bay. In winter, the shutters hold heat inside. Her November energy bill was $40.
“Besides, I love the visual of the shutters behind the door,” she said.
Antique Eastlake doors found at The Bank, an architectural salvage store, create a tight seal against the Louisiana climate.
Dittrich-Lips Art Glass cut red, green and purple glass for her kitchen door, which lets in sunlight and splashes of vivid color. Beautiful blue and rose glass from the 1930s or ’40s in the bedroom door came from Attenhofer’s Stained Glass Studio in Metairie.
Nelson also restored the home’s original plaster walls.
“Plaster is energy-efficient and keeps you incredibly cool,” she said. In her estimation, the destruction of plaster walls and hardwood floors after Hurricane Katrina represented real architectural tragedies.
via Comfort meets energy-efficiency in a restored Holy Cross shotgun | NOLA.com.
ST. LOUIS • Basil Kincaid’s brother makes fun of him for collecting rusty paper clips he finds in the street. But rusty paper clips are only the beginning.
Kincaid, an artist, has taken to combing St. Louis alleyways, lots with abandoned buildings and construction sites for discarded pieces of wood, old bricks, pieces of slate and other items deemed no longer useful.
They’re useful to him.
He transforms the junked wood into canvases. He applies images composed from photographs he takes around the city. He blends dust from finely ground bricks, slate and Missouri limestone into polyurethane that he paints onto the wood.
“All of the materials come directly from the street,” said Kincaid, 25, who is producing his artwork at the Pulse Community Art Center, 2847 Cherokee Street, where another body of his work is now on display. “Everything is related to our environment, being St. Louis.”
The theme of his new work is reclamation.
“I take these images of dilapidated buildings and nice buildings as well — pictures from all different parts of St. Louis — and collage them together to build this new city, so that when the audience comes together … they see we all grow out of the same environment,” he explained. “The focus is really community-minded.”
Kincaid, who grew up in Rock Hill and graduated from Colorado College, has a deeper purpose as well. He wants other young African-Americans to have the opportunities he has had. To that end, he said, he mentors three children from the city and has a 19-year-old assistant who is studying art at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park.
“The grand, overarching theme of reclamation goes beyond just this body of artwork,” he said. “It provides an ability for people, and the kids I work with, to reclaim their own identities and understand themselves within the true beauty that we all love.”
Kincaid’s assistant, Roosevelt High graduate Monkuell Barnes, has been working with Kincaid for about a year. Before they met, Barnes wouldn’t have given an abandoned piece of wood a second look.
“I wouldn’t have found beauty in any of that,” Barnes said. “But it’s taught me that beauty can come out of anything, really. You can make beauty from the ugliest things.
“I think he’s focused in on a very, very huge issue that’s going on in urban society… and he’s doing it through his art.”
via St. Louis street artist turns the obscure into a canvas of urban life.
IT is not often you enter a shop and find a mannequin with an Osama bin Laden mask wearing a bridal gown.
Especially when, from the outside at least, South Lismore’s Recycled Building Materials shop looks like any old warehouse.
But there’s nothing usual about the inside. It’s a museum of the different and the strange.
Luka (right) and Peter Robertson with ‘Errie’ at the Lismore Recycled Building Materials store.
The shop has been assembled in an artistic way, following an emotional train of thought rather than a logical one.
Nimbin’s Peter Robertson has been in charge of the family business for seven years, helped by his children Luka, 24, Jack, 22, and Rookie, 19.
A single dad for 17 years, and deaf until a cochlear implant changed his life seven years ago, Peter said it was a conscious decision to style the shop as a museum.
“It was always about making it fun and interesting, but we never thought we were going to get such a strong reaction from customers,” he said.
Asked which object had the most interesting story and Mr Robertson pointed to a grand piano.
“It is nearly 200 years old,” he said. “It’s a John Broadwood and Sons made in London. Canberra University may buy it. The piano that was built before this one was apparently given to Beethoven.
“It was brought to Sydney from the UK in 1937. We got it from a local lady who stored it for years.”
There are more enigmatic stories in the shop: “There is one demolisher, he sees an old lady with white hair every time he comes here. He wasn’t drunk but kept asking me whether I could see her.”
“He came back a couple of weeks ago and he said that she’s still here,” Mr Robertson said.
Sadly, the lease on the shop runs out on June 16 and is not being renewed by the building’s owner, meaning it is now in its final weeks.
Mr Robertson said the thousands of antique and second -hand objects would be sold online.
via Weird, wonderful stuff | Lismore News | Local News in Lismore | Northern Star.
Here at the RA we look to Salvo (based in England) as an inspiration, both in news and in tone. Salvo is the Godfather of reuse. As proven by this newspaper print ad from 1993 on the benefits of building material reclamation.
Salvo promoting reuse in the 1993 Salvo Directory [image © Salvo]
Read the actual article at Real sustainability 1: The reuse of reclaimed building material – SalvoNews.com.
Tim Bishop, left, of SHAC, and Clayton Prest, of Gapfiller, select a door from Pumphouse Demolition for an office made from recycled materials.
One person’s rubble might be potential material for Gap Filler’s new office.
Sustainable Habitat Challenge (SHAC) and ReGeneration Trust New Zealand are collaborating to build an office for Gap Filler in Colombo St, Sydenham, with the help of volunteers and as many recycled or sustainable materials as possible.
Gap Filler project co-ordinator Coralie Winn said she was humbled by the plan.
“It’s a very generous gesture that they are doing this for us and also teaching young people building and design skills,” she said.
PlanetReuse Begins Beta Testing New National Online Platform for Reuse Centers
Since 2008, PlanetReuse has been expertly matching commercial materials with designers, builders and owners to save projects money, serve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) efforts and sustain the planet.PlanetReuse is now expanding its services to make use of reclaimed building materials more commonplace in the residential construction market.
via PlanetReuse: PlanetReuse Begins Beta Testing New National Online Platform for Reuse Centers.
