You want the best possible building project? Define >deconstruction< as a goal, even if you do not believe in climate change

Designers and contractors love to think about how to best design and construct a building. They seem to love it so much, that they tend to have big arguments about it, sometimes even at court. It is easy to loose focus during such arguments and eventually, they are not delivering the best possible building...

What can you do about it?

> Put high penalties on time delay to force everyone to deliver in time.

> Try approaches like integrated project delivery to improve teamwork.

> ...

OR: Impose a holistic approach by asking your designers and contractors to not exclusively deliver a strategy of how to assemble the proposed building but also of how to deconstruct it in the future.

Here is what might happen if you do so:

#1 higher complexity triggers real teamwork: When asking for a building that has deconstruction in its DNA, the bar is set high enough that no party in the project can solve the task by itself. It is only possible in real collaboration with the rest of the project team.

#2 recyclability requires simple & smart connections: If you want to deconstruct a building whilst keeping its components in good shape, you will not glue and weld everything together. You will use more industrialized thinking as f.x. prefab and smarter connections.

#3 higher transparency evokes more innovation in procurement: you want to know where your building components come from and document it well enough so that you can reuse and potentially sell them in the future.

#4 improved flexibility: Can you say for sure that a new building will be needed in the same form at the same spot in 30 years? Most likely not. Just think about possibilities to easily (and cheaply!) exchange parts of the buildings to create new spatial configurations perfectly fitting to future requirements. Or disassemble the whole building and erect it again at another spot.

#5 you are a frontrunner because resource efficiency is the new energy efficiency: For years, the industry has been asked to improve energy efficiency - and it delivered. Zero energy buildings are reality today and even have a reasonable price tag. However, in most cases these buildings have a downside: they are a big pile of waste because you can not do anything else at the end of their lifetime than shred them to pieces.

You want to know more? Let's get in touch and discuss the details