Wasim Salama

Design for Disassembly Wasim Salama

Concrete buildings suffer from disconcerting end-of-life that is dominating by demolition. Demolition prevents reuse of the building elements and contaminates the environment. This, in addition to other non-preferable aspects is the result of ignorance of the life-cycle-design of buildings. While steel and timber buildings can be disassembled, concrete buildings, especially cast-in-situ have no options except demolition. To move concrete buildings to a higher level of sustainability in which building elements and components can be dismantled and recovered or can be changed and replaced, the construction of concrete buildings should consider the design for disassembly (DfD). DfD provides the buildings with high transformation capacity that leads to a higher sustainability. It also turns the linear life-cycle model of buildings to a more cyclic one. A review of the previous attempts to dismantle concrete buildings has shown that precast concrete systems have promising aspects. This study aims to consider DfD of concrete buildings from the architectural point of view through exploration, revision and analysis. The results will be utilized to develop systems that support disassembly.