海角视频

Discover how New York City’s innovative circular design and construction guidelines are setting a new standard for sustainable development, emphasizing the reuse of materials to reduce waste and resource depletion while achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Accord.

Great progress has been made towards achieving the goals set out in the Paris Climate Accord. Few actions are as apparent as the transition to a decarbonized built environment via the use of renewable energy and increased building efficiency. Despite the gridlocked polarization of US politics, operational emissions have decreased overall by over 30% since 2005. This progress, however, does not address embodied carbon or the impact on resource depletion, ecosystems, and biodiversity.

The 鈥渃ircular economy鈥� is a way to reframe how we think about so-called 鈥渨aste.鈥�

Rather than using products and retiring them to landfill after initial use, we can adapt systems to take those products to use again and again. At home, you might see this as food scraps turned into compost or returning a glass milk container to the grocery store to be refilled. If we can fit a product back into an ecosystem where it can be refurbished and resold, we avoid landfill and disruption to nature from further resource extraction.

The framework is built on three principles:

1. Eliminate waste
2. Circulate products at their highest value (i.e., reuse over recycling)
3. Regenerate nature

These concepts are being adapted to apply to our society鈥檚 biggest resource consumers, such as fashion, agriculture, and yes, the building industry. While substantial efforts have been made in Europe to facilitate a circular economy at broad scales, progress in the US has been disparate and limited to local efforts (e.g., Portland, San Antonio, Milwaukee, Palo Alto, Boulder).

In 2024, the (NYCEDC) – a public-benefit corporation that promotes business and job growth across the city – took a substantial step towards supporting this transition to widespread adoption in the country鈥檚 largest locality by publishing a set of Circular Design and Construction Guidelines as part of a . The plan designates a new publicly funded education and research hub in Manhattan, and a local pilot project for the new guidelines. 海角视频 is providing sustainability and circularity services for this paradigm-shifting project.

Guidelines are a first step in an alternative way of framing how we make decisions. What is first a pilot can be proven possible, then ultimately be made into policy. These guidelines have sparked a shift in the city, with at least seven new construction projects rethinking demolition for deconstruction and 鈥渨aste鈥� for 鈥渨hat if.鈥�

Overview of the NYCEDC鈥檚 circular design and construction guideline

The guidelines can be summarized into a series of goals, deliverables and strategies. The goals are relatively familiar to the industry and target waste diversion as well as embodied carbon reduction.

Perhaps more importantly, the guidelines mandate key moments of reflection before building demolition. These moments are:

1. An audit of the building for what can be salvaged and potentially reused
2. A workshop with the broader design team

These 鈥榮ignposts鈥� of sorts break the habit of current norms and thinking about building materials. The circularity audit positions the building team in connection with existing resources. Getting to know a building is a bit like getting to know a person. If you spend a day walking in someone鈥檚 shoes, becoming intimately familiar with their experiences and impact on others, it becomes easier to make a valued connection with them. Similarly, by exploring the materiality of a building and, in turn, its history of use by people through a circularity audit, it becomes harder to dismiss the building鈥檚 quirks and unique qualities as trash to be condemned to a life in a landfill.

In the digital era, when we spend much of our time working through screens, often remotely and away from others, an on-site circularity audit is a reminder of the materiality of our work and inspiration for the next step: a design workshop. Bringing the wider design team together with the findings from the audit serves as a means of flexing creative muscles to see what could be used in the future project as well as bringing to light the challenges worth tackling or tabling for future work.

Ideally, in time, these workshops would pool resources from multiple projects. Diversification of participating donor projects reduces risk and facilitates potential points of connection in a circular economy.

Congregating / formations for a reuse ecosystem

The circular economy requires cultural changes to replace current practices, and progress is not made in a vacuum. As part of the effort to support local projects, 海角视频 hosted happy hours in collaboration with , , , and .

Two events were organized and focused on: 1) finding other projects that could form a supportive network, and 2) materials and implementation. The glue or mycelium of this ecosystem was Dave Bennink, who invited his network of colleagues built over 30+ years of deconstruction work.

On a sweltering NYC summer day, practitioners, policymakers, and circular economy enthusiasts gathered to discuss the potential of NYCEDC鈥檚 guidelines for the city. A total of six projects were shared, and while many were in the early stages of planning or had limited scope, momentum indeed was beginning to grow.

RECLAIM-NYC discussed policy advocacy and assistance connecting reuse supply with demand. Adaptis shared stories of the idiosyncrasies of an 1800s building for which the firm had conducted a salvage assessment. Turner Construction shared their perspective as a contractor and their experience building a case to clients for material reuse on projects. A representative from the City University of New York discussed the need for reuse opportunities from large institutions with real estate assets facing demolition.

After the initial presentations, breakout groups formed to delve into critical aspects of material reuse, including storage, reuse markets, design, policy, and concrete waste diversion. Participants identified challenges such as physical real estate constraints, lack of regulations, and cultural barriers. The breakout groups also explored opportunities like utilizing vacant sites for storage, creating certification programs for reused materials, and updating building codes to support reuse strategies. These discussions highlighted the importance of collaboration, innovative solutions, and policy changes to drive the circular economy forward.

The second event, now in the winter, aspired to build on the projects shared in the summer event by focusing on the products from those projects. It was to be a 鈥渕aterial matchmaking鈥� event. This event exhibited industry success stories like Chief Bricks, a local supplier of salvaged brick for reuse, emerging technology like Pozzotive that recycles ground glass as a cementitious replacement, and leading examples out of Europe of direct reuse of in-situ concrete as precast elements in new buildings.

These presentations were followed by a sticky-note exercise. Attendees working on deconstruction projects shared materials that would be harvested from their projects. Designers could then ask to receive products for new construction. Lastly, all participants had the creative license to share out-of-the-box ideas for common building products. While participation was limited and the ultimate stories of reuse are only in draft form, this event exemplifies the type of collaboration that is important to transition to a circular economy.

In the future, design competitions could be an excellent way to creatively link used materials with new projects. A key theme to emerge at this event is the need for collective commitment to the circular economy as long as sustainability and circularity are viewed as optional considerations in the design and building process. It鈥檚 hard to focus on 鈥渢omorrow鈥� problems, like climate change, when 鈥渢oday鈥� problems, like schedule and budget, are so all-consuming. In particular, Dave Bennink lobbied for projects to see the ecosystem as a critical network for the success of all proposed projects.

Looking to the future

The construction industry worldwide is responsible for around 60% of material use. As we test the waters of a circular economy, two truths remain self-evident: 1) existing construction practices are incompatible with climate goals as well as the resource constraints of our planet, and 2) radical collaboration is required to address the challenges of adapting our current economy. It is at this critical time that architects and engineers can take courageous steps to address the big problems in front of us. We look to bring together communities and circular ecosystems to collaborate and make this viable vision for the future possible.