Why you should build it up to knock it down

Just when you thought you’d mastered putting buildings up, a new book by CIRIA says you should pay more attention to taking them down.

Demolition produces an estimated 30m tonnes of waste concrete, masonry and other debris each year. With landfill sites getting crammed and government raising taxes on aggregates, Design for deconstruction argues that the moral and business case for recycling couldn’t be clearer.

So, to guide us toward a zero-waste economy, this book argues we shouldn’t demolish buildings anymore, we should deconstruct them – and that requires a shift in thinking at the design and specification stage.

Some of the advice is not new. We’re aware that lime mortar makes it easier to reclaim bricks, for instance, and we understand that mechanical fixing is easier to undo than gluing or welding. What the book does, though, is to show how the whole project team can start employing principles of recycling at project inception.

The book contains case studies of other countries where the concept is more advanced, such as the demountable precast concrete systems in the Netherlands, and reusable brick-panel cladding system used in Paris.

Design for deconstruction: Principles of design to facilitate reuse and recycling by W. Addis and J. Schouten. www.ciria.org