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innovative construction methodDesigning the alternative
Designing the alternative: innovative construction method
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- J.T. Lyle, 1996 -
(1) W. McDonough and M. Braungart (2009), Cradle to Cradle. Re-making the way we make things, Vintage Books, London
(2) GXN Innovation (2019), Building a Circular Future. 3rd Edition, originally published in 2016 with support from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (3) F. L. Flager (2003), The Design of Building Structures for Improved Life-Cycle Performance, Submitted to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in partial fulfllment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Civil and Environmental Engineering, May 9 (4) S. Brand (1994), How buildings learn. What happens after they’re built, Penguin Books We’re facing today the urgent need to completely rethink our way of designing and of creating new urban policies, in order to provide an integrated construction system capable of addressing Circular Economy at the small as well as at the big scale, for the individual as for the society, in the events of everyday life as well as in long term measures. Strategies of mitigation of the impacts of human activity are not enough anymore. At the same time, Circular Economy can potentially give a greater meaning to the value of civilisation, assuming the environment we inhabit as part of our imaginary and not as something different. In this mindset, rethinking the construction sector in the way we produce and manage buildings over time becomes central, in order to fnally come back to a global ethic of posterity, that makes a positive use of the same technology that led us to an antagonistic relation with nature. . The origins of Regenerative Architecture
After 40 years of Reductionism, the construction sector has began to investigate the concept of Regeneration in architecture. Tis paradigm stems from three books in particular, published in the same years: Regenerative design for sustainable development by John Lyle (1994), How buildings learn by Steward Brand (1994) and the above mentioned From cradle to cradle by Michael Braungart and William McDonough’s (2002).
Regenerative Architecture is a design transposition of Circular Economy’s principles. Te attribute regenerative refers to a process that repairs, recreates or revitalizes its own sources of energy or air, water or any other matter, in order to create a virtuous circle, with a balance between the consumption of resources and creation of products and resources identical in quantity and quality to the initial ones. As a response to the imbalance between
anthropogenic activities and Earth’s regenerative and carrying capacity, Sustainable architecture calls both for a sustainable use of building materials and a change in material cycles from the cradle to grave to the cradle to cradle model (1) and fnally for the design projects to be active and self-regulating. Architecture is therefore perceived as a biological organism, that adapts its functionalities according to eventual environmental changes, in order to survive to the ecosystem, or rather implement it. Eventual environmental impacts both related to the Operative Life and to the End of Life of the building hence become central and infuence the design project since its very beginning.
In this regard, Regenerative architecture declines into two main operational felds: Design for Disassembly (also called Life Cycle Thinking) and Design for Adaptability. Te two approaches have the aim to take aware decision during the design phase of the building in order to prevent its premature demolishment and hence save wastes in terms of energy and resources, keeping products and material circulating at their highest value (2).
According to Design for Disassemble, the built project, as well as the single component, are conceived as a phase of the whole construction project (3) For this reason, Design for Disassembly requires an in-depth conceptual and theoretical exploration of the make-up of building systems and components, as not all of them can be easily dismantled and reused. Tis concept recalls the theory of building layers by the above mentioned S. Brand (4), who defnes building elements according to their life expectancy:
1. The site: the eternal geographical setting; 2. The structure: with a structural life ranges from 30 to 300 years (…). 3. The skin: exterior surfaces covering the building, as a threshold between the indoor and the outdoor environment with an expectancy of around 20 years. 4. The services: communication wiring, electrical wiring, plumbing, HVAC and distribution, (escalators and elevators). Tey wear out or obsolesce every 7 to 15 years. (2) 5. The space plan: the interior layout, that can change every 3 years or so. 6. The stuff: furniture, things as phones, pictures, lamps… Furniture is called mobilia in Italian for good reasons. (2)
Tis kind of distinction is fundamental in view of deconstruction and further reuse. It is important to maintain these systems as independent as possible so that components on higher layers could be altered or replaced without afecting lower layers. For this reason, types of connections used become crucial. In order to permit fast and easy disassembling method, they shall be both visible and accessible.
When we speak of Design for Adaptability, instead, we consider Regenerative Architecture in terms of program and function. It indicates the capability of the building to adapt to specifc needs and diverse demands over time. Te building shall be adjustable, (able to change its task), versatile, in terms of spatial fexibility, reftable and thus able to vary its performances, scalable, repeatible and convertible. (5)
. The main principles of Design for Disassembly during each phase of construction
Choices taken in view of Design for Disassembly could be defned by a few principles and criteria leading all the steps of Building Life Cycle, from the choice of its material and components, to its assembling operation, to its service life and fnal disassembling.
The phase of materials’ and components’ choice
Tis phase regards decisions concerning materials typology and production, as well as the design of the operative phase of the building.
Architects shall focus on the energy embedded in each material. Net zero buildings and zero-carbon buildings obtained this rating as they produce as much energy as they consume it daily. Yet, as they’re still following a Reduction paradigm, this computation doesn’t consider the energy needed to build them, that is a lot. In view of Regenerative Architecture and Design for Disassembly, the energy and carbon required for the production of a building product must be calculated in order to be fnally covered by materials’ value at the end of their operative life. All manufacturers shall carry out efective plans for transitioning to renewable energy use to fnally be able to use renewable energies in their manufacturing processes with a target of 100% of its use at the end of the production line. Terefore, companies who are currently producing their products using scarce or environmentally destructive resources should fnd alternative fully renewable, recyclable or biodegradable materials as basis for their production. Additionally, these resources should be able to be used in consecutive lifecycles.
Materials’ and techniques choices also depend on context. In view of Design for Disassembly, context shall be perceived as an active building component.
(5) P.R. Beurskens, M.J.M. Bakx (2015), Built-to-rebuild.The development of a framework for buildings according to the circular economy concept, which will be specifed for the design of circular facades, Graduation thesis elaborated for the degree of Master of Science in Architecture, Building and Planning at Eindhoven University of Technology, 24 September
Stuff Space plan Services Skin Structure Site
Reinterpretation of the diagram of Building Layers by Steward Brand.
(6) Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2018), The circular economy opportunity for urban and industrial innovation in China
(7) M. Angrilli in R. Pavia (edited by) (2012), Eco-Logics. Design and Ecology, LIst Lab, Trento
(8) Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2016), CIrcularity in the built environment: case studies. A compilation of case studies from the CE100
(9) A.Dickson (2020), Le case del futuro, in Prospect (UK), translated in Internazionale n°1351, 27 marzo
(10) E. Andreta (2011), Le tre rivoluzioni (macro - micro - nano) che stanno cambiando il mondo, in TECHNE Journal of Technology for Architecture and Environment, n.1, pp. 18-25 SYSTEM LEVEL
SUB-SYSTEM LEVEL
COMPONENT LEVEL
ELEMENT LEVEL
MATERIAL LEVEL Natural land, water, air, energy resources are active factors infuencing the design process and its related decisions. Moreover, locally appropriate materials can be more afordable. In China, for instance, the cost of a bamboo façade could be 60% lower than that of a concrete one (6). In this regard, the incorporation of locally available materials could also have the side efect to actively support a local economy that sources, uses, and reuses materials locally. Context defnes also the shape of the project, in view of blocks’ orientation, based on its position in respect to Sun, their link to existing urbanity, defned by fuxes of people and existing connections, the adoption of certain techniques based on local knowledge. Soil in fact is not just a mere morphologic support (7).
The phase of decision making
Architects shall design the entire Operative Life of the building and shall be able to envision all possible Stuff modifcations it could face over its service life. Space plan Fluxes of energy, materials, people shall be computed since Services the beginning in order to understand what will be the Skin Structure consumption of the building over its service life. Materials or Site components reparations shall be perceived as opportunities to improve the building, as the gold of the Japanese broken porcelain in the Kintsugi art.
Therefore, the design process should focus on Life Cycle Cost rather than its construction costs: this will always result in a more sustainable and robust building of higher quality (2). In fact, today, more than 80% of the total energy consumption in a building’s life is consumed during its use (8).
Tis principle of reparation could be also applied to the urban scale, in terms of retroftting and recycle solutions, releasing from the recurrent obsession for durability and permanence (9), deviating in this way from the Vitruvian imperative of frmitas.
Flexibility and adaptivity become thus central features to meet the new needs of the century and to avoid the risk of obsolescence, in view of an inter-relation men-environment characterised by continuous transformations. (10).
Functional changes of the building need to be potentially anticipated during its design phase, in order to avoid eventual episodes of ineffciency. In this regard, the key point of creating places is to remember that while a street may have a life of 1000 years or more, and a building perhaps 200 years, utility and building services may
have a life of 25 years (11).
Regenerative design is fundamentally based on anticipating the multifunctional evolutions of the buildings use in the future. In a rapidly changing society, our buildings need to be able to adapt quickly to changes and new sociocultural and demographic issues. It is therefore essential to integrate strategies allowing the building to adapt to a variety of uses over time, for example through the adoption of open structural systems, made of a few fxed elements, on which other fexible ones can be customised. Tis is the key to anticipate future modifcations of buildings by addition, subtraction or replacement.
The phase of assembling
Buildings shall be designed in view of easy assembling and disassembling. If the product is easier to assemble, it is also simpler and cheaper to produce and thus to maintain and upcycle. In this regard, as a precondition for concepts as reparation and substitution and reuse, Design for Disassembly asks for the use of accessible dry joints. Today buildings are normally statically welded, glued and cast together. Te ones designed to be disassembled are a smaller niche mostly built in timber with steel joints.
Thus the most signifcant challenge that the sector faces is how to make disassemble also large and complex concrete structures, which represent a lot of value and leave a huge environmental footprint. (12) In this way future buildings could become resource troves and hence material banks for next constructions. Peikko, a company that supplies a large selection of concrete connections and composite beams based in Finland, is working in this direction. It has recently developed dry joints solutions as the Sumo Wall Shoe or the Anchor bolts.
Moreover, Design for Disassembly could recall the concept of Lego: modular elements that can be combined forming almost infnite combinations and come back to their original value when disassembled later on. In this regard, when you use modular elements in the architecture project, you can speak of Modular Design. In this case, an object or system is made up of smaller independent components, or modules, that may be separated, recombined, and used interchangeably across diferent units of the object or system it belongs to (13). Modular design is generally combined to Design for Disassembly as a mean by which to make refurbishment, repair, and upgrade is far easier, as it depends on the combination of individual standardised parts that can be replaced, repaired, and upgraded independently of the other modules, if designed properly. Tis design approach may therefore extend product lifetimes and reduce the number of products and materials that are disposed of prematurely. According to Ellen MacArthur Foundation, (14) modular design typically reuses 80% of the components in a building’s exterior, providing durability. In terms of efciency, the miesean concept of less is more is still valuable: less components means more fexibility in terms of maintenance and use of the space over time and also energy savings in terms of components’ production. Moreover, their characteristic of-site industrial construction could greatly reduces waste generation, while all of-cuts could be fully recycled in the factory (15). Notwithstanding, modularity, especially in architecture, is generally associated to the risk of standardisation, given by the limited amount of forms and size of components. Nevertheless, modularity is part of our everyday life. Cars are modular, for instance: individual
(11) A.Ritchie, R. Thomas (edited by) (2009), Sustainable Urban Design: An Environmental Approach, Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York (12) GXN Innovation (2019), Building a Circular Future. 3rd Edition, originally published in 2016 with support from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (13) H. Meilani (2019), The Circular Potential of Modular Design, in Material Trader.com, 8 of November, https:// community.materialtrader.com/the-circularpotential-of-modular-design/ (14) Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2015), SUN and McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, Growth Within: a circular economy vision for a competitive Europe
(15) R. Lawson, R. Ogden (2010), Sustainability and process benefts of modular construction, Proceedings: TG57 – Special Track. 18th CIB World Building Congress
(16) Philips Industry (2017), Minimise your environmental footprint and create instant savings. Philips Circular Lighting, https://images.philips.com/is/content/ PhilipsConsumer/PDFDownloads/ United%20Kingdom/ODLI20171031_001PDF-en_GB-7036_Circular_Lighting_Digi_ WTO_01.pdf (17) C. De Kwant, How to Design Products for the Circular Economy?, in Modular Management, https://www. modularmanagement.com/circulareconomy (18) ARUP (2016), The Circular Economy in the Built Environment, London
Next page: detail of prototype of Anchor Bolt technology by N. B. Nolsoe and N. W. Sevel. Photo: L. K. Frederiksen, 2015 modules – the doors, windows, seats, tires, engine – are pieced together to form the car as a whole and are designed to be compatible with any car of its model. When you have a fat tire, or when the window shield gets a crack, would be insane to buy a new car. Tat would be far too costly in both economic and environmental terms. Instead, you’d replace that module of your car with a new one. (13). Tis is also the concept of modularity when associated to Design for Disassembling, as a system made of a permanent structure and of a sub-system, dynamic and fexible, on this depending. If your ofce has gotten too small to house your expanding team, you should be able to create enough space by adding on a few more modules to the building. Today the emergence of prefabrication is also due to the introduction of Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology in the process of Design for Disassembly, as, as later explained, it infuences the design, processes and planning of resources in the prefabrication construction industry.
The phase of management of the operative life of the building
The consistent use of modular components in the construction sector may mean for industries the need to rethink to current business models, with the aim to reduce demand for new materials by designing products for greater longevity, or even perpetual reuse, still obtaining an economic gain. As we’ll explain later, accessibility, rather than ownership, could eventually become the key for the creation of sustainable business models. Leasing concept is expanding, as it’s not always economically viable to own a product or a building. Philips, for instance, has recently presented a new kind of service, called pay per lux, that provides lighting to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on a lease basis, that means that it is responsible for the performance of the lighting for the duration of the contract. Specially designed light fxtures are easier to service and maintain making them last 75% longer than conventional alternatives. Philips takes care of the eventual extraction and reparation of individual component parts, minimising the need to replace whole fxtures and reducing the consumption of raw materials. Te system uses energy-efcient light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and is expected to cut the airport’s energy consumption by as much as 50% (16). In this concern, modular design enables companies to separate and replace modules that are used intensively and to gain feedbacks for eventual performance upgrades of modular components. Tis improves maintenance services along the product lifecycle, and enables processes for module return, recovery and reuse (17).
Moreover, swapping functions and sharing dynamics could extend the use of both spaces and products not fully used. A school building for example is empty in the evening and could be therefore used for other purposes. In this way, this model ensure the concept of re-use and exploit economic opportunities, shaping a relation between owners without a use for their product and people or companies with specifc needs. In this regard, researches show that young people are more inclined to rent, lease or share items such as clothes, cars or houses: a good starting point for future potential dynamics (18).
The phase of end of life
Te efciency of this last phase depends on the quality of the decisions made in the previous phases.
Materials and components shall be able to enter different loops, according to the level of
transformation they need before being reused. Each building product or material shall be able to biodegrade safely as an organic nutrient or be recycled into a new product as a technical nutrient. For this reason, all manufacturers shall be required to develop and implement strategies to close the life-cycle of their products with a goal of 100% recovery or re-use. Te guarantee that a material can be recycled is not enough in fact to judge it as a good material, especially if it wasn’t designed at the beginning to be recycled at the end of its life. Circular economy, in fact, should always consider value creation in view of upcycling, that means make them more valuable than originally. In order to explain this circularity of resources, McDonough and Braungart (2009) use the metaphor of the Cherry Tree, that looses all its fowers in a short period so that they can become nutrients for the tree and its new blossoms (19).
(19) A cherry tree in full bloom is stunning in its abundant beauty of hundreds of thousands of blossoms. (…) Yet how many of those blossoms eventually yield new trees? Maybe just one or two, which is a miniscule percentage! The cherry tree is in a sense incredibly ineffcient and horribly wasteful with its ridiculous bounty. Yet,(…), there is no waste in the system as a whole. The blossoms fall and are immediately an input to new biological systems – ants, microbes, worms and others feast on this free input – and eventually they produce their own “waste” which, in turn, is an input that feeds the cherry tree for its next season of ludicrously abundant blossoms. Bountiful and wasteful alone, the cherry tree’s ecosystem has no waste. In W. McDonough and M. Braungart (2009), Cradle to Cradle. Re-making the way we make things, Vintage Books, London
Principles of Design for Disassembling
Sale
P rod uct i o n C o mpensation Design
Financing
Materials
Energy Manufacture P e r fo rmance
Operation
Tracing materials production
Computation of energy needed for material production, building construction and operative life of the building. Compensation of the energy required by materials’ production. Financing
P rod uct i o n Design
Manufacture P e r fo rmance
Materials Operation Financing
P rod uct i o n Design
Manufacture P e r fo rmance
Materials Operation M ai n t e nance
The context as active building component
Natural land, water, air, energy resources are active factors infuencing the design process and its related decisions. The project and its context become part of the same metabolism.
Design the operative phase of the building
Materials or components reparations, planned since the beginning, shall be perceived as opportunities to improve the performance of the building. This principle could be also applied to an urban scale when speaking of programs of districts’ refurbishment.
Materials’ and components’ choice Decisions’ making and assembling phase
Financing Design
Manufacture
P rod uct i o n
Materials Operation P e r fo rmance
Sharing platforms and services
Extention of the use of both spaces and products not fully used by sharing them, promoting the emergence of a sharing economy.
The principle can be shaped into two different ways: by the diversifcation of use of a space in different moment of the day or by more people sharing the same space at the same time. Design
Financing
P rod uct i o n
Materials Manufacture Operation P e r fo rmance
Flexibility
Monitoring time rather than challenging it
Flexibility and adaptivity of the blocks become central features to meet the new needs of the century and to avoid the risk of obsolescence
Regenerative design is thus fundamentally based on anticipating the multifunctional evolutions of the buildings uses in the future. Design Financing Materials as resour c e sBiodegradation Manufacture P e r fo rmance
Operation
Recovery and recycling
Materials enter a process of circular economy, so that at the end of their operative life they become new resources for new beginnings. This means that each building product or material must be able to biodegrade safely as an organic nutrient or be recycled into a new product as a technical nutrient.
Operative life of the building End of life of the building
