More than just another brick in the wall
The transformative power of re-using building materials
The social and environmental reasons for re-using bricks and other building materials couldn’t be stronger. They are packed with history and also with “embodied” carbon emissions. But the economics of construction still stand in the way, facilitating a continuous cycle of demolition and new build. A classic example of misplaced value.
The value of re-use is illustrated by the story of a wall in Brooklyn, NYC. In Urban Omnibus, Christopher Dameron describes his architecture practice’s project to preserve an existing wall when they were creating a new building and garden. As it wasn’t structurally safe to keep as-was, instead they embarked on a meticulous process to dismantle the wall brick by brick, sort and categorize the bricks, and re-build it.
Through the excavation process they found the debris of retreating glaciers from 13,000 years ago; the marks of 19th century brick-makers with their family names stamped on the bricks, which had been fired from the clay banks of the Hudson and floated down the river to the city; and tags from 21st century graffiti writers.
Tied up in the materials of buildings are questions of labor, social justice, and economic disparity. In Baltimore, bricks from a former steel plant that at one point employed 30,000 people, and its neighboring houses, are being repurposed for high-end apartments in neighboring Washington DC. In Atlanta, the city’s Director of Waste Diversion and Outreach Michelle Wiseman works to connect re-use in building materials and other waste streams to economic and social opportunity.
As she put it in a session on construction materials:
“All that material [in a building] has a story. Once homes are demolished, that history is thrown in the trash. We are looking at all these materials and their ability for re-use”
CIRCuIT, a recent multi-year project in four cities in Europe – Hamburg, Copenhagen, Helsinki’s Vantaa region, and Greater London – researched practical examples to increase circularity in construction materials, i.e. to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill. It cites the fact that the construction industry and its materials are responsible for over a third of global resource consumption.
The research covered the breadth of actions needed, not just re-using materials, but also refurbishing existing buildings, and designing for future disassembly and re-assembly. On materials, their recommendations include integrating “pre-demolition audits” that involve the whole value chain at the earliest stage of a project: with the owner, architect, and demolition or deconstruction company walking carefully through the proposed site together to map out what can be re-used.
It’s a recurring theme in built environment transformation: investing time upfront and involving key people across disciplines can pay dividends down the road: economically, socially, environmentally.
Policy change, procurement-power, and the investment in infrastructure to support a shift to materials re-use are also needed, as illustrated here:
Waves of demolition and destruction of buildings continue in urban areas everywhere, through economic forces, through needless conflict. Salvaging and re-using materials may seem a small step, but it can also be seen as a form of resistance, and of a shift towards a different kind of built environment economy.
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Discover more:
- The article on the wall in Brooklyn is from the online publication of the Architectural League, Urban Omnibus. Check out their excellent “New City Critics” program, which “empowers new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and develop our cities”.
And a couple of pieces that I’ve written for Urban Omnibus:
“Power Tools”, an interview with plumber Judaline Cassidy on her story and the Tools and Tiaras program that introduces young girls to construction
“A Safe Space”, an interview with Ligia Guallpa, the Co-Executive Director of the Workers Justice Project, which works with immigrant day laborers in construction and other industries.
- On the forces of demolition and its implications, see this special issue of Buildings & Cities journal on “Understanding Demolition”. And zooming in on a specific context, listen to my podcast with Eli Friedman about his book “The Urbanization of People”, which looks into the demolition of schools for migrant workers’ children in cities in China.
- Finally: “Demolition, redevelopment and re-use” is the sixth stage of the lifecycle in IHRB’s Framework for Dignity in the Built Environment, a blueprint that guides built environment decision-making towards human rights and social impact.