New York's First Statewide Deconstruction Summit
On December 6, preservationists, architects, contractors, environmentalists, students, academics, recycling coordinators, and city planners were among the 60 or so attendees at the first annual statewide Deconstruction Summit, held at Russell Sage College in Troy. The summit was co-hosted by The City of Troy and TAP Inc., with support from NYSAR, Russell Sage College, CR0WD, and NYSERDA. The goal was to generate ideas about potential statewide deconstruction legislation.
Photo courtesy of Re:Purpose Savannah, a women+ led nonprofit establishing a sustainable future through the deconstruction and reuse of historic buildings. Pictured are three women inside a building being deconstructed, shown removing wooden beams with crowbars.
In the United States, the construction and demolition of buildings produces 600 million tons of waste every year, 90% of which comes from demolition. That’s double the next greatest source of materials sent to landfills, which is municipal solid waste (source). In addition to the tremendous environmental and societal impact of throwing out so much irreplaceable material, there’s the enormous cost in embodied carbon – the carbon emissions associated with the production and transportation of building materials – associated with both demolition and new construction. A growing number of people in the architecture and environmental worlds are focusing on building deconstruction as a sensible strategy to reduce the environmental impacts of both demolition and new construction while advancing the creation of a circular economy.
As preservationists, we don’t want to see old buildings taken down, whether by wrecking balls, backhoes, implosion, fire, or collapse. Nor do we particularly want to see them disassembled piece by piece – we would much rather see them rehabilitated and reused. At the same time, we have to be realistic: not every building will be saved. When retention of a building is just not an option, deconstruction, defined as “the careful and systematic dismantling of a part or a whole building structure in order to maximize the recovery of valuable material,” offers a way to keep some building materials out of landfills and instead return them to active use.
The organizers of the Deconstruction Summit thoughtfully structured the format to foster intentional, inclusive discussions. Organizers assigned participants to small groups, ensuring each group had representatives from a variety of sectors and viewpoints. As they worked their way through the discussion topics, using color-coded paper pyramids to indicate agreement, disagreement, and requests for clarification, and recording their consensus statements in linked Google documents, the groups were encouraged to call on designated experts when they had questions related to our various areas of expertise. (I was the designated historic preservation expert, filling in at the last minute for Susan Holland of Historic Ithaca.)
When not engaged in answering questions from the discussion groups, those of us at the “experts’ table” pursued our own wide-ranging conversation about deconstruction, picking one another’s brains about asbestos and lead issues, legislative strategy, safeguards for historic buildings, lessons learned from other cities and states that have enacted deconstruction ordinances, the need to rapidly increase infrastructure for storing and marketing building materials, managing supply and demand, and more. The afternoon work period concluded with a lively Q&A session in which attendees peppered our panel of experts with questions raised during their day-long discussions.
At the beginning and end of the event, we heard remarks from Assemblymember Anna Kelles, who is taking the lead on developing statewide legislation around these issues, and David Bennink of RE-USE Consulting, who has worked throughout the United States and Canada deconstructing buildings, training deconstruction contractors, and helping to create deconstruction ordinances throughout the country. From Dr. Kelles, we learned about what state legislation could, and could not do, to support the development of a deconstruction industry and circular economy. David shared lessons learned from his vast experience about questions such as whether to start by creating supply or demand (it’s the latter), how deconstruction contractors can bid competitively against demolition contractors, and what kinds of incentives or regulations will help expand the pool of qualified deconstruction contractors.
We’re looking forward to learning what policy recommendations come out of this summit and will remain engaged in this issue through membership in CR0WD’s statewide group. If deconstruction is a new topic for you, we encourage you to watch our recent Future of Preservation webinar focused on this topic, featuring panelists who are doing this important work around the country.
Inside the room at Russell Sage College during the Deconstruction Summit, with participants broken up into smaller groups around circular tables.
For further reading, the Summit organizers put together a comprehensive reading list: