Taxonomy of design for deconstruction options to enable circular economy in buildings

Achieving ambitious sustainability goals requires a breakthrough in the design, construction and operation of buildings to maximise the residual value of building components throughout their end-of-life. This implies a dramatic reduction of construction demolition waste (CDW) and therefore raw material consumption. Design for Deconstruction (DfD) will make it easier and faster to dismantle building components in order to reuse components removed during the renovation or demolition of buildings in another construction project, or to recycle materials into a new product. 

A paper recently published on Resources, Environment and Sustainability (open access) analyses the selective demolition and DfD as means of achieving these goals. A literature review is carried out, with the two-fold aim of assessing the state of the art in life cycle assessment studies on this topic and developing a taxonomy of applicable selective demolition and DfD solutions, framing it within the context of policy development in the EU. The taxonomy of buildings must be based on the structural typology of their components. The Eurocodes provide a common approach to the design of buildings and civil engineering works, and already define the structural materials that are assumed as the basis for this work: concrete (EN 1992), steel (EN 1993), timber (EN 1995) and masonry (EN 1996).

Highlights of the paper:

• Review of CDW handling options for conventional and selective demolition and DfD.
• Proposal of a taxonomy of various building elements and materials based on the Eurocodes.
• Review of the reuse potential of building materials and elements.
• Assessment of the state of the art in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) relative to Selective Demolition and DfD.
• Science to policy perspective as a way to contextualise these strategies.