IMAGE CREDIT: VectorMine / iStock via Getty Images
Reducing Waste and Improving Architectural Impact
Exploring modular construction’s contribution to the circular economy.
“I was part of the problem”
Celeste Tell is dropping truth bombs. These days, the founder of epicycled is known for her leadership around circularity and regeneration in the built environment. But looking back, she sees how her approach has evolved.
I was an award-winning designer. I designed spaces for high-end clients that were completely custom and unique and couldn't be used anywhere else. And then what we started to see was all the change orders, right?
Celeste Tell, Founder, Epicycled
Celeste Tell, Founder, Epicyced
Work on the move
While Tell didn’t write the book on how construction impacts sustainability and planetary health, she did help write the chapter. Back in the early 2020s, in the early days of the pandemic, she consulted for Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA). Along with a more than 20 others she helped draft third edition of Work on the Move. That’s where Tell reconnected with her AWA colleague Lisa Whited. They explored resource demands of buildings through the lens of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Whited focused on sustainability while Tell was focused on embodied carbon and circularity. Years later, both women are still passionate advocates of the circular economy as it applies to the built environment. Whited was certified as a Circular Economy Specialist in 2022.
Workplace construction and demolition isn't typically sustainable
IMAGE CREDIT: wsfurlan / istock via Getty Images
The circular economy
So, what is the circular economy? Pioneering work on the subject has been done by the Ellen McArthur Foundation. This is the short version. In an ideal system, materials stay in play indefinitely. Maintenance, reuse, refurbishment are all tactics used to tackle climate change, waste, and resource depletion. To do this, the circular economy is based on these three principals:
01 Eliminate waste and pollution
02 Circulate products and materials (at their highest value)
03 Regenerate nature
“The whole point is to eliminate waste, right?” says Tell. “So, it's not about recycling. It's about fundamentally eliminating waste so that anything that you're done with has another place to go other than the waste stream.”
The circular economy is about fundamentally eliminating waste
IMAGE CREDIT: Whale Design / iStock via Getty Images
Not the easiest thing to do when you are dealing with an industry responsible for 30% of the waste on the planet.
We're used to a linear economy, which is when you extract resources from the earth, make them into something, use them, and then they go into a landfill at their end of life. Waste is a feature of the linear economy, whereas with circularity we're always keeping the products in play, and they never go into the landfill.
LISA WHITED, Workplace Strategist
Lisa Whited, Workplace Strategist
Waste is a flaw
According to Whited, in a circular economy, waste is a flaw. So, avoiding waste means breaking from the linear model. To do that, Whited and Tell have examined different ways to build. When it comes to commercial interiors, they’ve had success using modular systems that are prefabricated off-site like DIRTT. The thinking is that precision manufacturing helps reduce waste right from the start. By using computer-controlled equipment in a facility that processes multiple projects, raw material use is maximized limiting off cuts and unusable materials.
Then, once wall assemblies, casework, or timber structures are created, their modular nature means that they can be installed on top of flooring and under the ceiling grid, allowing those trades to work quickly in an open space. This also reduces waste for these trades by reducing the number for cuts made on ceiling tiles and flooring materials.
“The clean installation - the fact that the flooring and the ceiling can go in in a plane. And then the walls come in on top of that, versus the labor that it takes to cut out all the carpet and fit it piece meal. I think there's a lot of really wonderful efficiencies about DIRTT and how DIRTT works as a system,” says Whited.
Off-site manufacturing offers precision that reduces waste
Around we go
But in the circular economy, the initial build is only the first step. The next trick is to ensure that the thing you built stays relevant and out of the landfill. With steel studs and drywall, it’s almost impossible because the system is static. Once changes are required it usually means drywall dust and demolition.
With DIRTT’s layered modularity, when components come apart, its non-destructive. That means they can be reconfigured and reused as dictated by design. Using durable MDF and recycled aluminum means that parts and pieces have the strength to stand up to repeated deployment.
“That's one of the three principles right of the circular economy,” says Whited. “To keep items in circulation for as long as possible means we need to start with more durable products… The materiality - it's very high quality and that's essential.”
DIRTT's modular components disassemble to allow items to stay in circulation
Real World Application
It’s one thing to talk theoretically about construction and the circular economy. It’s another thing to do it. Whited and Tell put these concepts into practice for environmental engineers Woodard & Curran at their headquarters in Portland, Maine. Designing with DIRTT, and using a standardized kit of parts, with intentionally limited dimensions, they created a space that offers solo workspaces, huddle spaces and meeting rooms. But by creating these rooms with single height, and using assemblies of a set width, if headcount or needs change, the space can be reconfigured to adjust the size of rooms without tearing down and starting from scratch.
“A really important piece of using demountable walls in a circular way is that you have to have components that can be reused over and over again,” says Tell. “Recycling is a is a last resort. You really want to keep those parts and pieces in play.”
Woodard & Curran standardized on a kit of parts to ensure and adaptable office
IMAGE CREDIT: John Benford
Northland Power is an example of how workplace interiors can be reused to save time, resources, and money
IMAGE CREDIT: Joaquim Santos
The economic case
Tell and Whited’s concepts aren’t a secret, but getting people in construction to lean into the circular economy isn’t always easy.
“It's often the challenge because they just look at that the first cost and they can't imagine the long-term implication,” says Whited.
What often gets lost in the conversation is the value a circular approach brings to Day 2 and beyond. Reduced maintenance costs. Ease of reconfiguration. Organizational efficiency brought to a space that can quickly adapt.
“This is what I love about the circular economy. Notice that one of the two words is economy. And that is because it's a fundamentally different business model,” says Tell.
Disassembling existing glass walls for adaptive reuse
IMAGE CREDIT: Daniel Alexander Skwarna Photography
An example of this is a renewable energy company that moved into a space that was outfitted with DIRTT from a previous tenant. They took over three floors, but there was a fourth floor full of DIRTT wall assemblies set to be decommissioned. They folded that product into their project. By remixing all the DIRTT into their new space, they reused 75% of the materials and saved half a million dollars in the process.
“It’s a great story,” says Tell. “Circularity is a fundamentally different business model that can increase return on investment. It can increase profitability done properly, but you have to create it as a business model, not on a project-by-project basis.”
Repurposed solid and glass walls in Northland Power's updated space
IMAGE CREDIT: Joaquim Santos
Dance with uncertainty
There isn’t a week that goes by without a new think piece on the future of the office. With return-to-work mandates in a perpetual state of roll out (or roll back), organizations have to be more nimble than ever when it comes to space and how they use it. For Whited and Tell, using the principles of the circular economy offers some relief by using construction materials that can adapt.
“Our world was already unpredictable and uncertain before the pandemic because of all the new technologies. The pandemic put uncertainty on steroids. And now the political circumstances of the world are even increasing that uncertainty. Yet our industry and our culture is trying to hold on to certainty and stability. What we really need to do is learn to dance with uncertainty,” says Tell
“DIRTT is working to make a product that truly could be pulled apart and repurposed over and over again to keep it out of the landfill,” says Whited. “In an ideal world, that's what we would do with virtually all products.”
IMAGE CREDIT: Mel Willis
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