Design for Buildability and the Deconstruction Consequences

The disassembly of a building may sound like the opposite of its assembly, but in practice it seldom occurs this way. The slow careful process of construction requires large numbers of people, large quantities of materials, and long periods of time. The reversal of this sequence is usually practiced as demolition and requires very little of the time and effort of the construction sequence. Despite these usual differences, if controlled and sequential disassembly were practiced instead of demolition, the construction and disassembly sequences could essentially be the same, one simply being the reversal of the other. This paper presents a discussion of buildability and the notion that designing a building for ease of assembly might also lead to ease of disassembly for future reuse and recycling. Principles of design for ease of assembly, or ease of construction, can be adapted to become principles of design for disassembly. If such reverse sequencing were to be attempted and designed for, both heuristic principles of buildability and broader philosophies or approaches to better assembly, should be valuable sources of knowledge in designing for disassembly.