Designing to dismantle
Where possible, Kier Construction repurposes building products, from structural steel to stone facades, in new designs to minimise waste and save embodied carbon. This should be the case across the entire industry – but it’s much easier for developers with larger estates to do than development managers, who don’t have sight of, or control of resources across an owned portfolio.
So, how can we incentivise this shift to building for deconstruction and make it feasible for more projects? Could a consistent approach to materials exchange industry emerge, connecting reusable building products to different schemes? Could this coupled with a greater emphasis on off-site and modular development, ultimately help to reduce carbon and promote circularity?
It was agreed that we should also create long-lasting frames and super-structures that can be adapted as the needs of building users change.
More systemised and standard approaches will be crucial to allow building components to be transplanted from one project to another. We also need to design in ease of disassembly from the start. As Siu-Pei Choi, Kier Construction London’s Head of Design, put it – it’s about going from nails to bolts.
Yes
No