| id |
acadia24_v2_87 |
| authors |
Alkhayat, Latifa; J. Lee, Keith; Mueller, Caitlin |
| year |
2024 |
| title |
The Crown Jewels |
| source |
ACADIA 2024: Designing Change [Volume 2: Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference for the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) ISBN 979-8-9891764-8-9]. Calgary. 11-16 November 2024. edited by Alicia Nahmad-Vazquez, Jason Johnson, Joshua Taron, Jinmo Rhee, Daniel Hapton. pp. 569-578 |
| summary |
Virgin materials used in the construction industry strain resources and cause further exploitation. This is true of the raw materials used to produce construction materials and products and the fossil fuels that feed energy into the processing line. The cement industry causes 9% of carbon emissions due to the chemical process of its creation and the energy needed to fuel it (World Green Building Council 2019). To mitigate these impacts, it is imperative to minimize the use of new concrete. This remains a challenge as the demand for construction is high, and simultaneously, buildings no longer deemed fit to use are being demolished and replaced by new construction. Demolished structures are a quarry for new construction. Substantial amounts of rubble from demolitions are crushed in landfills for aggregate. This work leverages the material's larger and stronger form rather than reducing it to infill. Concrete rubble, as chunks, is often considered a complex material to construct with, as it is inconsistent and irregular in size and form. However, better reuse is within reach with the aid of scanning tools, digital design workflows, and advanced fabrication methods. This research proposes tractable ways of upcycling concrete from demolition sites to create new, innovative structures and avoid downcycling the material. The paper demonstrates a novel application of algorithmic tools leveraged to support the use of irregular rubble-based inventories as structural components. The proposed ‘rubble trusses’ are designed as assemblies of concrete chunks that are processed, strung together like a jewelry piece to create a structural and aesthetic language for material circularity as the ‘Crown Jewels’; whereby rubble is regarded as gem. |
| series |
ACADIA |
| type |
paper |
| email |
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| full text |
 file.pdf (9,622,178 bytes) |
| references |
Content-type: text/plain
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| last changed |
2025/07/21 11:42 |
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