Designing for disassembly

Abstract

With increasing levels of awareness about ecosystems constraints on development, and a growing desire to create green buildings, there is a general acceptance of the need to reduce the quantity of building material consumption and to reduce construction and demolition waste. Much of the construction industry activity, in seeking to achieve these goals, is focused on the efficiency of material use and waste minimization on the construction site. At the other end of the building’s service life, in the demolition industry, we see some attempts to recycle materials, though generally this is in the form of down-cycling such as crushing concrete to create road base. Higher levels of recycling and reuse are less common. The basic problem is that buildings are not generally designed to be taken apart. This chapter presents a summary of research into the design of buildings for future disassembly and materials and component reuse. It explores three broad themes, and twenty six principles for designing for disassembly