Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Matan Mayer
Material recovery in the built environment is typically examined and practiced as a technical endeavor, which involves multiple scientific domains. This paper explores how material recovery and reutilization could also be used to build creative problem-solving skills among students in architecture education, particularly in construction curricula. Within this context, the paper describes and analyzes findings from a five-year pilot course offered at an undergraduate level professional architecture program. The course substitutes a foundational construction class, which in many institutions focuses on a linear survey of widely practiced construction methods and their corresponding building details. Instead of employing that classical approach, the course aims to convey construction principles through the act of inventorying and reusing components from a given building stock. It does so through four sequential phases: an analytical phase, where students conduct an in-depth study of a case in contemporary construction at multiple scales and media, including physical models; an inventorying phase, where students are required to deconstruct their case into discrete elements and characterize their physical properties; and a redeployment phase, where students are requested to use their inventoried material stock to reconstruct their case in a considerably different configuration. This act forces the students to use components that have been designed to carry loads and connect to other components in a specific direction and manner, in an entirely different set of structural and compositional constraints. As part of this process, the students are also asked to design new connection details for the reused components while considering the new context of each component. The paper presents a comparative study of the environmental implications of this approach and concludes with a discussion regarding current limitations and future investigation trajectories.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.45
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
