by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: The winners of the first annual Lifecycle Building Challenge were announced at the West Coast Green Conference in San Francisco on September 20. A partnership between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Building Materials Reuse Association, West Coast Green, and the AIA, the contest was conceived to “jumpstart the building industry to help reuse more of the 100 million tons of building-related construction and demolition debris sent each year to landfills in the United States.” Green Building Blocks, the competition sponsor, provided cash awards to student winners, and Green Building in Alameda County, Calif. provided the awards.

The Lifecycle Building Challenge grew out of a project that the EPA helped fund at the Chartwell School in Seaside, Calif., that demonstrates lifecycle building concepts. The school tested new systems including nail-free paneling, centralized utility raceways, structural insulated panel roofing, and cold joint sidewalks that can be easily moved for reuse. The contest was held between January and April and was open to built, unbuilt, professional, and student work. The submission categories include Building—an entire building from foundation to roof; Component—a single building assembly, system, or connector; and Service—a tool, method, or other idea.

EPA Assistant Administrator Susan Bodine; AIA President RK Stewart, FAIA; and Building Materials Reuse Association President Brad Guy, AIA, recognized award winners for their progressive green building ideas that aim to reduce environmental and energy impact of buildings. Nine projects were selected as winners, and 12 were chosen for honorable mention.

WINNING ENTRIES

Building

Pavilion in the Park (Professional, Built)
David Miller
The Miller|Hull Partnership
The 11,100-square-foot Pavilion in the Park’s entire structure is designed for future transportation, reassembly, and reuse in a new location. The building’s parts separate at three integrated joints to break into four separate movable modules. The building sits lightly on the land atop short concrete piers, allowing the grade and vegetation to run uninterrupted beneath. Gangway ramps with integrated hinged joints allow the ramps to adapt to the topography of future locations.

GreenMobile Factory-built Housing Units for SE USA (Professional, Unbuilt)
Michael Berk
Mississippi State University School of Architecture
GreenMobile™ envisions affordable, factory-built, and energy-efficient mobile home units that meet International Residential Code for housing with structurally sound foundations, demount for easy relocation, and function in a place with a limited infrastructure or no utility grid in place. They can be used for immediate disaster relief housing, including first responders, and later converted to permanent housing. The project incorporates systematic strategies for growth and change as family structures also grow and change. “Pre-fabricated plug-in” rooms, plug-in porches, and surface-mounted wiring are also featured in the design.

The groHome (Student)
Adam Fenner, Jason Bond, Thomas Gerhardt, Josh Canez, and Nick Schaider
Texas A&M University, 2007 Solar Decathlon Team
The software community’s open source concept was adapted in this entry to develop open source building systems that allow anyone to design and incorporate elements into the building system if grid protocols and standard joint connections are used. Using a library of pre-manufactured components brought to a site and assembled efficiently, the structure is designed with a specialized bolted connector joint that allows for components to be unplugged easily and without damage. Radio Frequency Identification Tags (RFID) can be embedded to take inventory and check the history of components. The project includes a community building game, Utopia 2.0, to allow neighbors to swap building modules as family and community needs change.

Sustainability by Design: Deconstruction and Adaptive Reuse (People’s Choice Award)
Mitch Boucher
Haworth Inc.
When Haworth, a global designer and manufacturer of adaptable workspace environments, planned major renovations on its headquarters, the company set a goal to recycle or salvage up to 75 percent of the materials. The project diverted more than 99 percent of construction materials through reuse and recycling: 321 tons of steel were recycled; 75 workstations were donated; and door locksets were removed intact and reused in other facilities. More than 58,000 tons of carpet tiles were removed for re-installation, donated to local schools, or recycled.

Component Category

Green-Zip-Tape™ Demountable Tape (Professional, Built)
by Frank Little
Tax Advantage Design
This patented demountable tape provides an alternative method for hanging sheetrock for future de-construction and reuse. Drywall has traditionally been a barrier to gaining easy access to structural components of the building for repair or reuse. This tape and associated screw connectors allow drywall to be easily removed and replaces the traditional nailing mechanism, which can damage the drywall and inhibit reuse.

Deconstructable and Reusable Composite Slab (Professional, Unbuilt)
Mark D. Webster, Dirk M. Kestner, James C. Parker, and Matthew H. Johnson
Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc.
The composite component floor system uses specialized bolts, serrated clamps, and cast-in channels to create a more easily disassembled system, allowing reuse of the composite slab. A serious problem with conventional composite slabs is that it is a “throw-away” system; most of the parts are completely non-reusable at the end of the building’s life. The team developed a composite slab system that maintains the efficiency benefits offered by composite action, while adding near 100 percent reusability. The structure allows the slab and beam to work together to resist bending due to floor loads. The size of the steel beam can be reduced by over 30 percent providing both economic and environmental benefits.

Guidelines for Building with Reusable Materials (Student)
by Aaron Tvrdy
University of Nebraska
This project foresees waste materials gathered in bulk, refurbished, and stored in regional design centers where designers can create components out of former waste. One example uses discarded railroad track and ties to create a superstructure for a wood pallet wall system. With a creative design approach, reclaimed material kits can be used to create attractive components that can either celebrate or conceal their original identity.

Tool and Service

ATHENA Assembly Evaluation Tool (Professional, Built)
Wayne Trusty
ATHENA Institute
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a tool for determining the environmental impact of various building materials through all phases of its life, from extraction through use and disposal. The ATHENA software tool adopts LCA methodology to measure the climate-changing potential and other environmental impacts of more than 400 common building assemblies. A free generic version will be made available to the entire sustainable construction community.

Deconstruction Engineer (Student)
Keith Cullum and Paul Sargent
California Polytechnic State University
The project proposes a new degree program and profession: the Deconstruction Engineer. These professionals would consult throughout a building’s lifecycle to ensure that adaptation and deconstruction occur in the most effective way. During the first stages of planning a structure, the engineer offers design suggestions to anticipate efficient deconstruction. At the end of a building’s life, the deconstruction engineer evaluates and assesses safe reverse construction procedures for salvaging materials.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Building

Modular 3 (Professional, Built)
Dan Rockhill, Studio 804
University of Kansas
This two-bedroom, one-bathroom residence encompasses 1,200 square feet of living space and is composed of six modules. The proportions of Modular 3 have been tailored to dimensions of a standard city lot, and a raised pier foundation allows for low-impact implementation in nearly any single-family residential context. A movable storage wall permits splitting an area such as a single bedroom into a separate office and storage space at the homeowner’s whim.

Re-use of Cleveland Iconographic Structure (Professional, Unbuilt)
Dru McKeown
TOI Studio
Instead of creating new building systems, designs for bus and light rail transit stations and street furniture were created out of the façade of a building slated for demolition. The project recaptures the materials and embodied energy that were spent creating the initial structure. The entrant calculated that the average building’s embodied energy is equivalent to 10-15 gallons of gasoline per square foot and that materials in an average American home have embodied energy equal to 29.25 automobiles weighing 1.5 tons.

Nine Components to Residential Architecture (Student)
Anthony Piede, Georgia Institute of Technology
This flexible modular housing is an integrated system that simplifies design, construction, and disassembly with a pyramid foundation raised on steel bearing pins to allow easy assembly and disassembly without poured concrete. Other featured components include modular decking frame, reclaimed wood decking, flitch beams and columns with simple screw and bolt connections, prefab SIPs, insulated glass units with optimal thermal performance, and snap-on panel aluminum roofing.

Transformative Multi-family Housing (Professional, Unbuilt)
Koji Saida, Mimi Sullivan, Hyun Joo Choi, and Keiko Ito
Saida + Sullivan Design Partners
This multifamily housing is a mixed-use project with 12 residential units and one retail space on the ground level. By standardizing all the building components and using a simple connection system, the entire building’s components can be easily deconstructed, reused, and recycled. By exchanging some standardized wall panels, a two-bedroom unit transforms into a three-bedroom unit, and by removing all nonbearing walls, the three residential units that are grouped as typical can be transformed into office use.

Community Revival Shelter (Student)
Greta Modesitt
University of Virginia
The concept creates transitional community spaces to support cooperation between the inhabitants while they renovate their neighborhoods following a disaster. An umbrella superstructure protects the builders from the elements while temporary steel web, cardboard, and fabric structures designed for off-the-grid living are erected and used until rebuilding of permanent structures is complete.

Component

Expansive Panel System (Professional, Unbuilt)
Sean Dorsy
Catholic University of America
Inspired from the efficiency of pizza boxes, the Expansive Panel System (EPS) is an alternative to traditional wood framing. EPS uses digital fabrication and computer numerical controlled machinery to fabricate with minimal material waste while allowing for a simple assembly using precise components. The EPS has a “zig-zagging” pattern that allows panels to expand from a single sheet of plywood without added fasteners, conserving material, time, and money. A projection comparing the EPS to traditional light-frame construction found a cost savings of $597 and material weight reduction of 4,406 pounds. These components also are designed for disassembly and reuse in future structures.

Joist Lock (Professional, Built)
David Wilson and Michael Kozel
AVAVA Systems¸ LLC
This joist-lock component is a strong, reusable alternative to conventional wood framing. The patent-pending device connects manufactured wood I-joists intersecting from two different planes and locks, creating a rigid connection at the intersection. The connection creates a force-resistant frame out of the wood shell of a building, eliminating the need for braces or shear walls to support the shell against wind and earthquake forces. The joist lock forms a rigid tube that can span from end to end, eliminating the need for continuous foundations used in traditional construction.

Low-tech Pre-fabricated Structural Building System (Professional, Unbuilt)
Siobhan Rockcastle, Cayley Lambur, Dana Cupkova-Myers, and Kevin Pratt
Cornell University
The flexible dome-shaped system uses laser-cut recyclable cardboard, high-density polystyrene foam, and a waterproof fabric membrane, which can be separated, readapted, and recycled as needed. The basic bracing structure can be sequentially erected very quickly: pre-fabricated cardboard bracing is folded along seams; waterproof glue with a catalytic release is applied to lower ridges of the bracing; hexagonal/triangular lightweight foam panels are adhered; and a compressible foam rod is inserted between panels to eliminate the need for sealant.

Bracket Dome (Student)
Thomas Hagerty
Iowa State University
This submission examined the question: “Why aren’t buildings already designed to be disassembled?” A simple structure was made of light switch mounting brackets, an object from which many different structures could be built. The project grew to include joint details, connection diagrams, and alternative spaces and elevations to support the concept of lifecycle building.

Service

The Nail Extractor (Professional, Built)
Jeff Wagner
The Nail Extractor
These extracting pliers were invented to aid in building restoration and renovation by removing fasteners without bending or cutting the exposed materials. During a renovation or salvage project, the amount of fastener removal required can be extensive and time-consuming. Though the nail extractor was originally designed to pull brittle older nails, it can also remove pneumatic nails and staples. The tool allows for easy, single-handed operation, using jaws that exert increasing gripping pressure in proportion to the resistance encountered during extraction.

Promoting Reuse of Building Materials While Protecting Public Health (Professional, Unbuilt)
Jennifer Voichick
Habitat for Humanity of Dane County, Wis.
This project explores options to divert building materials with potential lead-paint hazards from landfills in a manner that is both environmentally responsible and addresses public health concerns. Under Wisconsin state law, all items with paint or other coatings produced before1978 are presumed to present lead hazards unless tested to prove otherwise. The proposal would identify alternatives to landfills that allow reuse of materials with lead-based coatings and address concerns about lead poisoning that could serve as a national model for other businesses promoting reuse of building materials.

Living Homes Studio (Student)
Julie Phanstiel
Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles
The Living Homes Studio has designed and built a full-scale architectural prototype demonstrating new technologies in creating a sustainable living environment. This photovoltaic-powered prototype integrates prefabricated components with passive heating, cooling, and air exchange systems to create a model for sustainable housing. Through the use of prefabricated components, sustainable systems, and designing for disassembly, the project is sensitive to its users and the natural environment.

AHP-Based Selection Model for Best Sustainable Practices for Construction Projects (Professional, Unbuilt)
Suhasini Hyderabad
University of New Mexico
This Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) Model allows contractors to evaluate sustainable construction methods against a set of criteria to help educate contractors on sustainable construction practices and their potential benefits. Reusable concrete forms are evaluated in the model, with benefits to contractors using sustainable methods including construction cost savings, increased competitiveness between contractors in sustainable construction, and reduced environmental impact.