University Building Material Reuse

James Kitchin

Director of Performance & Provenance

MASS Design Group

LEEDuser Basic Member

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August 18, 2023

Hi everyone! I'm extremely pleased to be back in this group after a couple of years out and I'll spare no time in spamming your inboxes.

MASS is working with UT Austin to help them evaluate their campus buildings for reuse firstly and then deconstruction and material reuse. Their campus, as with most campuses, is constantly being built and demolished. So it seems possible to create circular material flows within the campus itself. Does anyone know of any University's or owner/developers that are attempting to do something similar? It could be US or international.

I think the outcome of this effort would be overlay of their masterplan identifying what is in the buildings, when it is coming out, where it will go and in what form.

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Kjell Anderson

Director of Sustainable Design

LMN Architects

LEEDuser Basic Member

4 thumbs up

Fri, 08/18/2023 - 17:03

Hi James, At various points we have attempted to raid the attic stock warehouses of Universities, as they have massive quantities of never-used items that are likely to be landfilled before any use at all. Some also have repair shops where some manner of circular economy exists already. Austin has the Austin Materials Marketplace (Rheaply). But sadly we haven’t been able to tap into these resources for projects…yet. Good luck and I’d love to know the answer as well. We have considered individual projects for deconstruction/storage/reuse of materials but it’s been difficult to expand beyond that. One non-University example: https://lmnarchitects.com/lmn-architects-completes-the-renovation-of-the-hines-seattle-headquarters -Kjell From: J

Pauline Souza

Partner, Sustainability Director

WRNS Studio

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Fri, 08/18/2023 - 17:18

I am not sure if this is helpful but I was impressed with the report that the San Francisco Dept of the Environment (Eden Bruckman who many of you know) did on waste in our construction/specs process– lots of good info that may support what you are doing. See link below and some folks on this Guru list were integral to the report : 2021 Surplus Report_SF Environment Find it here https://sfenvironment.org/building-materials-management F

Stephanie Gowing

Sustainability Director

Absher Construction

LEEDuser Basic Member

1 thumbs up

Sat, 08/19/2023 - 14:19

Hi James, I came upon this article this AM. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652623024745 Its shares a bit on the Circular Construction Lab (CCL) at Cornell University's College of Architecture. Stephanie Gowing Absher On Aug 18, 2023 10:07 AM, James Kitchin wrote: This Message originated outside your organization. ________________________________