Conservation of Resources by Designing a Meccano for Temporary constructions

Reusing building components is an effective way of conserving embodied resources, materials as well as energy, in a life cycle perspective. However this requires innovative design, which anticipates an eventual demolition and provides versatile and adaptable constructions. This paper shows how constructions and their components can be designed with the necessary reuse qualities, by using a minimum number of different components. To monitor the environmental load of such Meccano-like designs, an assessment method that focuses on the conservation of embodied resources is detailed in this paper. The environmental benefits are discussed through the design of temporary constructions.

Publication year:2009

Keywords:reuse, building components, life cycle, environmental load assessment, Meccano