The New Façade Paradigm – Recycling, Upcycling and Disassembly in façade design

PhD Project by Pelle Munch-Petersen.

This PhD project takes its point of departure in investigating Design for Disassembly in façade design. The underlying premise is that the new focus in sustainable architecture, that being recycling, upcycling, circular economy, urban mining etc. all revolve around the materials of our buildings as centre of attention. In this PhD project the use of materials in architectural design is studied though the lense of Design for Disassembly. DFD is discussed both looking at Design for Disassembly as an (new) architectural work method and consequently studied as a new tectonic potential of a reversible/dynamic architecture.

Through the last decade there has been an increased focus on the global scarcity of raw materials (Mancini et al., 2013). This has resulted in international reports drawing attention to production methods, products and design methods within the building industry. Conjointly, regulations and demands affiliated with energy performance of the building have developed drastically since the 1970ies and continue to do so.

In order to meet these high performance demands an escalating amount of materials is being used per building.

The Danish building legislation focuses primarily on operational performance as the main issue for a sustainable building culture thereby negating the subject of material scarcity. But when discussing the long-term effect of our building culture concerns regarding durability, effectiveness, flexibility, embedded energy and material recirculation also need to be considered thus displaying the existing regulation and its focus as being simplistic.

The fact that the world is facing increasing material scarcity combined with high energy performance demands of the building industry brings about a dichotomy in architectural approach to materials. High energy performing building demands a lot of material in order to bring down energy use of the building. The relation between performance energy and imbedded material energy, and how DFD can possibly be the key to unlock this dichotomy and secure material lifespan is a main theme in this PhD.