The Salvage Manifesto: Harness the Power of Material Reuse

Shannon Goodman: Five years ago, Build Reuse strategically overhauled our name and our whole ethos around what is our most important purpose of existence—reusing building materials. And the reason we did that was because we cannot solve these problems and create these opportunities without cross-sector collaboration.

The power that designers and architects have in creating this change is very significant and may not be fully recognized. And the reason I say that is because of the nature of the relationships that they have with their clients. And some of those clients obviously are particularly influential as companies and organizations.

Now, granted, prior to architects and designers feeling confident or comfortable becoming an advocate, [they need to connect] to a local resource. There’s a sequence of steps and some learning that needs to happen first.

Avinash Rajagopal: The number one ask I get from architects and designers is, “Who can I talk to? What’s the material reuse resource in my city?” We usually point them to the All for Reuse Ecosystem Map. So that would be step one: find a local resource and really build a relationship with them. What would the second step be?

SG:  Incorporate the recovery of material into your project specs, as an alternative to demolition. I got to tell you, it’s not the sexiest thing in the world, but specifications matter a lot.

How do you influence all of the players in this process? And the top of the food chain is the client. You want to understand what benefits of reuse matter to the client. It could be an ESG thing, it could be carbon, it could be a money thing, social impact. It could be economic impact, workforce development. You don’t know until you talk to the client.

Then, it translates down. [Once you convince the client and put material recovery into your project specs] those specs are going to tell the contractor how to do what they need to do.

Stephanie Phillips: What’s also really interesting to the point of visibility and influence is that just because our program [Deconstruction & Circular Economy at the City of San Antonio] exists, we now get cold calls from the most influential people in San Antonio, who are massive property owners. They’re like, “Hey, we know that we are overproducing waste because we renovate our spaces so often, but we don’t even know where to start.” They want to reuse more, but they don’t know how to go about doing it.

AR: Do you think we need policies and regulations to drive building material reuse?

SP: There are different pipelines.

Cities in Colorado and California literally are trying to scramble to comply with their state regulations around zero waste. So that’s an interesting top-down dimension.

In Atlanta or San Antonio or Austin, all of these places that don’t have that pressure from the [state] top-down, it either takes the city government to push [material reuse] or, what we’re seeing in Savannah, Georgia, is that they’re doing it from grassroots advocacy approach, and it’s a combination of trainings, community engagement, and demonstration projects.

We can’t [always] rely on the environmental dimensions [of our work, to gain support]. We have a sad running joke: “Do not tell our governor that we have a deconstruction ordinance because he’s going to preempt it, and then we’re not going to have any other cities in Texas that can do it.” Instead, what we rely on is workforce development, historic preservation, and affordable housing. We have a very direct pipeline to affordable housing. And obviously those can get politicized too, but [those are the benefits that sway policy makers], it’s social support, it’s prosperity.

SG: It’s the human stories that make building material
reuse so compelling.

---

02 Support Different Models of Salvage

Case Study: Life Cycle Building Center

In 2009 architect Shannon Goodman was involved in a firmwide sustainability initiative at Perkins&Will’s Atlanta office, where she helped educate colleagues and clients on green building rating systems, material health, and civic policies. Goodman had worked at several smaller studios after earning her M.Arch from the Georgia Institute of Technology, but at Perkins&Will her eyes were newly open to the inextricable links between natural and built environments. “I got very inspired and interested. I was just like a sponge,” says Goodman.

Simultaneously the Atlanta office had doubled in size and was straddling two separate spaces, divided by the city’s infamous Peachtree Street. To accommodate its growth, Perkins&Will purchased an existing 1980s building a block away—50,000 square feet of Class A office space with perimeter offices and drop ceilings contained by a concrete structural frame. But the firm wanted open floor plates, flexibility, and radiant heating and cooling. Almost everything had to go. 

Though the demolition contract had already been signed, Goodman—feeling a surge of courage and clarity after a six-month yoga teacher training—surprised herself by speaking up: Couldn’t some of the building’s original materials be salvaged for reuse, especially since Perkins&Will’s leadership was targeting LEED Platinum for the renovation? “Why would we only think about grinding this up and recycling? It didn’t make sense!” recalls Goodman. Working closely with the demolition contractor, Goodman went from assuming the endeavor would be a good exercise but not a “needle mover” to diverting 80 percent of demolition and construction waste (60 tons) from landfills and distributing it to more than 20 local nonprofit organizations. 

“That was the beginning of everything,” says Goodman. Inspired and propelled by the office project, Goodman went on to cofound Atlanta’s Lifecycle Building Center (LBC) in 2011, with the help of private donors and supporters at the U.S. Green Building Council, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other organizations that were equally compelled and captivated by Goodman’s passion. “If one commercial office building could have that impact, what could we do if we had that every day?” says Goodman. 

The LBC has been answering that question for the past decade-plus from its headquarters in two 100-year-old warehouse buildings totaling 70,000 square feet on Atlanta’s industrial corridor Murphy Avenue. With a $70,000 operating budget, Goodman and her team of seven assess projects for deconstruction, help salvage and collect materials, store and redistribute those materials and products to nonprofits and disadvantaged communities, lead job trainings to create a workforce of people who are skilled in deconstruction and construction, and more. 

lifecyclebuildingcenter.org

Excerpted from “Squaring Circular Design,” featured in METROPOLIS’s Products 2024 issue.

---

Case Study: Rheaply

Rheaply is a B2B climate tech company that is bringing ingenuity to the salvage and building-material recycling game. 

Using money from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance Game Changer Fund, the company built an online exchange for building products and other resources in the Bay Area. The exchange allows businesses in the greater Bay Area to access surplus and reclaimed resources at cost-effective rates. 

“This network, or marketplace, focuses primarily on materials streams within the built environment and aims to increase the economic activity of the rescue and reuse of salvage and surplus items,” says Tom Fecarotta, chief marketing officer for the Chicago-based company. “Any Bay Area organization looking to sell, donate, or acquire building products and office supplies or furniture can sign up for free.” 

Once users register for the company’s marketplace hosted by the San Francisco Environment Department, they can list or claim materials and communicate with each other via the messaging option. A “pro” version of the reuse marketplace tool adds permissions-based listings and advanced reporting. 

The San Francisco project primarily focuses on commercial construction and includes items such as reclaimed bricks, marble slabs, metals, office furniture, lamps, and blinds. Rheaply is currently expanding to seven additional cities with a goal of 50 sponsored cities by the end of 2024. 

Fecarotta concludes, “We need more introductions to large commercial suppliers and receivers, and municipality leaders, to continue the momentum we have and build the supply-and-demand partners necessary for a thriving circular economy.” 

rheaply.com

Excerpted from “Superstars of Salvage,” featured in METROPOLIS’s July/August 2023 issue.

Case Study: RotorDC

RotorDC is a cooperative company which is entirely owned by its employees. We are based in Brussels, and we attempt to be as generous with this city as it is with us. We seek to collaborate with contractors, non-profits and other companies, and to become a central part of a regional ecosystem for large scale reuse of building materials. 

Organisation  
RotorDC’s work is carried out by four dedicated teams.  

• The Acquisition team focuses on sourcing sustainable materials and establishing partnerships.  
• The Process team handles the materials physically on site. 
• The Shop team handles marketing, customer service, storage, and delivery.  
• Our Support team manages accounting, HR, IT, and subsidies.  

More than just materials 

By trading in salvaged materials, we help reduce the quantity of demolition waste, while offering quality building materials that have a negligible environmental impact. 

Many of our materials are cheaper than new for the same quality. Some materials are equally expensive as new, but come with a great story, a deep patina or simply a clear conscience. And then, from time to time, we offer for sale pieces that were conceived by renowned designers, or created by skilled craftsmen, or made using technologies now out of reach. These pieces are priced a bit higher, but we hope the economies made with our more generic materials help bring them in reach of the many. 

We have a strict policy with regards to exceptional architecture, and never get involved in demolition projects before they obtain the proper permits. We fully support maintenance and refurbishment strategies for existing buildings. We require documentation of ownership on all of the materials that transit through our shop. 

Developing new sets of skills 

While reusing building materials is as old as construction itself, building materials and techniques have significantly evolved since. We develop deconstruction techniques, logistical systems and remanufacturing installations for contemporary building materials, with a focus on finishing materials. 

Our specialisations include 

• repair and transformation of lighting equipment, 
• a state of the art method for removing mortar from ceramic tiles 
• the reprocessing of high quality ‘urban’ wood 
• cleaning and preparing for reuse of furniture and building hardware 
• planning and organising of salvage operations in large and complicated buildings 

Origins 

Since 2012, Rotor has been documenting existing dealers of secondhand building materials in Belgium and in neighbouring countries. The results are published on opalis.eu. Through this study, we realised that despite the high level of  professionalisation of the sector, many dealers are focusing on rustic materials destined for the domestic rural market. Few were geared towards selling what comes out of large building compounds of the service sector, which then and now makes up the bulk of demolition debris in metropolitan areas like the Brussels Region. Rotor Deconstruction grew out of the realisation that certain dots needed urgent connection.

rotordc.com

Excerpted from rotordc.com 

---

03 Imagine a Built Environment Centered Around Salvage

Here are some proposals for a circular built environment from METROPOLIS Future100 honorees, who are the top graduating architecture and interior design students in North America.

Self-Storage
Designed by 2024 Future100 honoree Alex Olson

Alex Olson’s (University of Michigan) temporary dwelling called Self-Storage is made for the reclamation and dispersal of domestic things. The project suggests a Maison Dom-ino of stuff caught between owners, in a state of ephemeral use. The project grew out of Olson’s part-time work as a mover for 1-800-Got-Junk in high school. “We had to figure out where all this stuff would go. Nine times out of ten it goes to the dump,” he explains. This project allowed him to open up an alternative: a temporary structure built out of cast-off things that would otherwise go to waste. Solid items like furniture or strong cardboard boxes could serve as the frame, and other items could be infill. 

C-House Connected Community
Designed by 2024 Future100 honoree Chizumi Kano and his peer Suvin Choi

In response to the devastating 2021 Dixie Fire in Greenville, California, Chizumi Kano (California College of the Arts) devised a new lodge and community center that incorporates mass timber throughout, responding to the area’s long history of logging, ranching, and hospitality, while proposing a new breed of fire-resistant, sustainable materials. C-House Connected Community offers a Welcoming Center (containing a library and museum), short-term rental units, dining, and a makerspace organized around a communal courtyard. The structures incorporate CLT for roofs, panels, structural grid, columns, and mullions. To leave a trace of the site’s recent history, the ruins of fire-scorched brick walls are preserved in places, merged with wood blocks. To achieve openness and ventilation, glass walls would open to the interior courtyard.

campGROUND(s)
Designed by 2022 Future100 honoree David Rico-Gomez

Mass extinction has made clear that architects also must begin to design for the needs of the nonhuman. David Rico-Gomez (California College of the Arts), embraces this imperative in campGROUND(s), an undulating mega-landform designed to serve as a new gateway to Alameda Creek in the East Bay. Constructed from offcuts and leftover dimensional lumber, the lattice structure provides gathering spaces for people as well as modules of burrowing owl habitat. Over time, the landform is colonized by pioneering plant species, blurring the line between building and landscape.

Autonomous City
Designed by 2021 Future100 honoree Matthew Morgan

In Autonomous City, Matthew Morgan (The City College of New York) imagines a neighborhood that maximizes the productivity of every urban surface, looking at how waste streams and urban agriculture can satisfy a large city’s needs. He analyzes the surface area and productivity potential of different building forms and crop types in a bid toward a circular economy. 

Queering Textiles
Designed by 2021 Future100 honoree María José Fuentes

In her Queering Textiles project, María José Fuentes (University of Pennsylvania) conceives a textile recycling flea market that explores a sustainable method for reusing clothing waste. Using Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of the City as a framework, Fuentes focused on site and memory as key considerations of the project.