In today’s market, consumer demands fuel a linear economy that commences with material extraction and terminates in waste.1 We relegate construction and demolition materials to this seemingly inevitable fate when we take resources out of productive use and put them into the disposal stream. This process generates 600 million tons of debris annually in the United State, of which 25% is landfilled, 75% is recycled, and less than 1% is reused when calculated by weight.2,3 Recycling requires resource intensive processes that are virtually invisible to the typical consumer who may only perceive a difference between new and recycled materials in the price. When indistinguishable, recycled goods do little to fundamentally challenge our normalized patterns of consumption. As Michael Braungart notes in his book Cradle to Cradle, “the best way to reduce any environmental impact is not to recycle more, but to produce and dispose of less.”4 In academia we have an opportunity to leverage circular systems to optimize a materials’ inherent ability to be reused. Design build projects that redirect building materials back into our communities can contribute to healthier social, economic, and environmental neighborhoods while exampling processes to inform and evolve design practice. These processes are challenging to implement due to limited material availability, insufficient infrastructure, untested material capacities, fixed linear design processes, and the lack of industry, market, and client incentives. Until these barriers cease to exist, architectural pedagogy is well positioned to question the fields’ relationship to waste and the conventional ways of working that ultimately feed our landfills.
Julia Lindgren (Sun,) studied this question.