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DE
CONS
TRUC
TION

An International Symposium on
Off-site Reuse in Architecture

With ROTOR as Visiting Professors of
the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft

Organised by the Chair of Architecture and Dwelling / Jaap Bakema Study Centre, HNI

April 24-25, 2017

THEME

DECONSTRUCTION

The topic of this conference the 2017 International Symposium of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment — TU Delft, with visiting professors ROTOR, is off-site reuse
in architecture, a practice that involves salvaging components and materials from buildings that have reached the end of their life cycle, in order to reuse
them elsewhere. Off-site reuse has been a common practice for centuries; however, during the twentieth century it became a forgotten art as most buildings
were built with no idea about reuse and the concomitant question of sustainability. Today, the idea of off-site
reuse is once again gaining momentum as the linear modes of materials consumption proper to the
age of industrialization are being questioned.

Yet, in a highly streamlined building industry, many obstacles and tenacious routines need to be overcome
to make these practices more than marginal again. Legislations need to be rewritten, certification protocols
to be reinvented; designers need to change habits, engineers to rethink component assembly technologies, etc. In the past decades, deconstruction professionals, designers and other experts have pushed this agenda
and made some valuable progress. This symposium will bring several of these actors together in order to gauge where we stand now, what lies ahead and what
progress is within reach, in terms of engineering,
design and overall policy.

The breached topics will fall under the following headings:

— What might off-site reuse mean in terms
of building culture, heritage and social value?
— How to deconstruct existing buildings
slated for demolition practically? What are
the technological, logistical and adminis-
trative implications?
— What design challenges, but also opportunities lie in the integration of existing components in new structures?
— How to design buildings in such a way
that you maximize its potential for later reuse, on site, but also off-site? Is the “legolization”
of the building industry within reach? And
is it desirable?

CONTEXT

The conference Deconstruction and this publication are part of the Visiting Professorship of Rotor — Lionel Devlieger and Maarten Gielen—at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, in collaboration with the Jaap Bakema Study Centre (JBSC) and Het Nieuwe Instituut, in Spring 2017.

Representing a new approach to contemporary architectural practice, Rotor develops critical positions on design, material resources and waste through research, exhibitions, writings and conferences. Core element of their professorship is a special studio, focused on the deconstruction of modernist and contemporary buildings slated for demolition, to make their components available for a redesign assignment.

With the Visiting Professors programme The Faculty of Architecture and The Built Environment attracts nationally and internationally renowned designers to contribute to the renewal of research and education with their outlooks and networks.

Founded in October 2013, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre is a collaborative research initiative between Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.

‘Design for deconstruction’, or DfD, as it is often known —
is a pragmatic, industry approach to the cradle to cradle idea. We would note that “deconstruction”, in this usage owes more to the construction industry than to continental philosophy. The United States’ National Institute of Building sciences refers to deconstruction in their Whole Building Design Guide as… the “systematic disassembly of a building generally in the reverse order, of construction, in an economical and safe fashion for the purposes of preserving materials for their reuse”. In the DfD approach, materials and assemblage systems are selected in readiness for the end
of the buildings’ life, so that they are better able to be upcycled, rather than laid waste or poorly recycled. The aspiration of design for deconstruction is to code the logic
of unmaking into the building from the very earliest point
of its making.

Cairns, Stephen, and Anne M. Jacobs (2014). Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, p. 225.

“All architecture is but waste in transit.”

Peter Guthrie, as quoted in: Till, Jeremy (2009). Architecture Depends. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, p. 67

CONTENTS

4Studio Rotor: Deconstruction
Dirk van den Heuvel
8Urban Mining, Salvaging Materials.
Conference statement
Rotor
16Conference programme
18Case:
Timmerhuis in Rotterdam
by OMA / Reinier de Graaf (2013-2015)
20Case:
Youth Hostel Ockenburgh in The Hague
by Frank van Klingeren (1971-1974)
24Case:
Ministery of Social Affairs in The Hague
by Herman Hertzberger (1979-1990)
28Speakers

“...d’autres dimanches nous [Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand] partions dans des zones d’entrepôts de récupération de matériaux, dans des décharges, à la recherche de formes inattendues rassemblées tout naturellement par l’ordonnance de l’accumulation ou par le hasard. C’est ainsi que nous sommes tombés sur des blocs de métaux compressés à faire pâlir César de jalousie.”

Perriand, Charlotte (1998). Une Vie de Création. Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998, p.105.

3
Deconstruction
Pictures by Rotor
4
Dirk van den Heuvel — Studio Rotor: Deconstruction

Studio Rotor: Deconstruction

For the spring semester 2016-2017 the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment welcomes as Visiting Professors Lionel Devlieger and Maarten Gielen of the Brussels based office Rotor. Being a relatively young office, their work is representative for a new kind of emerging practice in architecture, in which various disciplines are combined - from research and exhibition making to material studies and re-use strategies. Rotor made its fame with their installation ‘Usus / Usures’ at the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 2010. ‘Usus / Usures’ was entirely made up from salvaged building components, which are usually overlooked and treated as waste, such as carpet, stairs, railings et cetera. These elements were exhibited in an isolated manner as to draw closer attention to their own intrinsic qualities, despite, or perhaps exactly because of their anonymous and ordinary appearance, and because of the traces of wear and tear caused by everyday use.

From thereon Rotor continued its critical investigation in sustainability
issues in architecture in various projects and exhibitions, including the Oslo Triennale 2013 ‘Behind the Green Door’ and the 2016 exhibition ‘Constellations’ at the Architecture Centre Arc en Rêve in Bordeaux.
This year, Rotor was awarded for its innovative work with the annual Blueprint Architecture Award and the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, while Maarten Gielen received the Young Maaskant Prize 2015
of the city of Rotterdam.

Core element of the Rotor Visiting Professorship is a special MSc studio that focuses on the deconstruction of modernist and contemporary buildings slated for demolition, as to make their components available for a radical redesign assignment. The studio will be an intense 10-weeks workshop programme combining archival research, building analysis, site visits and radical redesign.

The studio will follow the iterative cycles of data collection and analysis, research and design. Three case studies will be investigated to challenge the limits of material re-use. Students will be challenged to rethink architectural design and history from the questions of re-use in the broadest sense imaginable: re-use of ideas, of composition and building techniques,
re-use of knowledge, of archives and memory, re-use of materials and of building elements.

Archive seminars at Het Nieuwe Instituut are part of the studio as to analyse the selected historical cases. These are from the historical production of Dutch Structuralism. Apart from collecting information, producing overviews of design development etc., the main question involves what elements of this historical production lend themselves for re-use?

Next to the dossiers of Dutch Structuralism other architects’ collections from the national archive of Het Nieuwe Instituut as well as iconic, contemporary projects will also be part of the research as to enable comparative analyses, in terms of performance, potential for recycling and reappropriation, including aesthetic possibilities. From this point of view, the archive is not to be considered an ‘art historical’ reservoir that houses the canon of Dutch architecture, but the archive is a resource providing basic building material, as well as an active element for the (re)design of projects.

5
Deconstruction

This question of re-using existing buildings, their history and the archive has also a literal dimension: how can the historical buildings be taken apart into elements (construction, materials) and re-assembled in new ways. Through
a practice of material re-use buildings themselves are to be reconsidered as repositories, not just of materials but also of knowledge and past practices that might find new applications, becoming part of new value systems.

The question is also intended as a provocation to trigger a debate on the value and role of history and the archive in contemporary architectural design. Not only does this approach entail the urgent questions of sustainability and re-use, but it also implies a need for a different view on history and the historical production as a resource for innovation.

Public Activities

The start of the Rotor Visiting Professorship is marked by an international conference on deconstruction and re-use, as to present and debate the central issues of the studio. International experts will present new innovative design approached and inspiring best cases. Midway the studio, a public lecture by Rotor will take place, while at the end of the studio presentations will be combined with public reviews with special guests.

The archival research (including two research seminars) will be co-organized with the Jaap Bakema Study Centre at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

Results of the studio will include: inventories and analyses, design concepts and proposals, exhibition presentations.

Dirk van den Heuvel

6
Dirk van den Heuvel — Studio Rotor: Deconstruction
Pictures by Rotor
7
Deconstruction

Urban Mining, Salvaging Materials. Conference statement

The topic of this conference — off-site building components reuse — might seem narrow and, at first sight, thinly relevant to an architectural education programme. We are talking about how to disassemble one component from
a building that is meant to disappear, and how to integrate it into a new realization. We will be discussing demolition and dismantling technologies, logistics, industrial design of components, second hand markets. We will be reflecting upon legal issues, questions of liability, certification, taxation, employment opportunities, etc. Yet we believe, and this conviction motivates both the symposium and the studio, that these seemingly peripheral but profoundly concrete questions, outline, in filigree, the central challenges
for the development of a circular building industry.

Photograph by Olivier Beart

The urge to build greener, like environmentalism, appeared in the late 1960’s, early 1970’s, but was dominated for decades by the question of energy efficiency. A green building was a building that consumed less fossil fuels than its ‘unsustainable’ equivalent. The focus was later on how much CO2 a building emitted during its ‘operational life’. Only recently did one start to take that building’s entire lifecycle into account. Experts now calculate, for instance, how much energy was used to extract, transform, transport and assemble all components of a building before it starts operating. That quantity, the total embodied energy, is but one of the parameters assessed during a life cycle analysis (LCA), the increasingly popular but tediously complicated account of a building’s impact during its lifecycle; a cycle that runs from origination until demolition. Evaluating the impact of the disposal of the remains is equally part of such an assessment. These calculations have allowed a recent, direly needed reappraisal of eminently material problems such as the depletion of the natural resources and the troublesome accumulation of waste materials caused by the building industry, out of which almost nothing but low grade, down-cycled products can be derived.

8
Rotor — Urban Mining, Salvaging Materials. Conference statement

Therefore, bending our materials economy, in this case our building materials economy, from a linear arrow to a circular loop, has become the latest urgency. Public authorities in many European countries are now issuing regulations in favour of a circular economy. But the gap between intentions and day-to-day practice is wide. Planned obsolescence and the wasting of material resources still seems inscribed into the DNA of today’s businesses, also in the construction sector. To shift the current state of affairs, three different courses of action in favour of a circular building economy should
be pushed forward:

1.The first one of these wants to change how buildings are made.
It is the engineer’s approach. It is also referred to as Design for Deconstruction or Design for Change. It implies that if precious resources are wasted when a building reaches the end of its lifecyle, buildings should be conceived differently. They should be designed in such a way that they are easy to modify, as to preclude functional obsolescence, or easy to disassemble, without the loss of component functionality and value.
2.The second course of action, urges primarily for different business models, which would unyoke a builder’s profitability from the necessity to sell goods, and thus to consume material resources. An example is architect Thomas Rau, who advocates the servitisation of built infrastructures: so-called end-users would no longer be paying for goods (buildings), they would pay for services (access to, heated, lit, and ventilated spaces). The provider of these services, who is also the owner of the building and its contained equipment, will necessarily manage his property carefully and make sure that its operational life would be a long as possible. Wastefulness will be minimized.
3.A third course of action — the one that to us at Rotor seems most within reach — is that of urban mining. Instead of trying to change how the current industry works, it focuses on the task of salvaging a maximum of material value from the built environment as it exists today. Urban mining, as any form of mining, can go from the most brute (the equivalent of the open pit mining with heavy machinery, i.e. recycling), to the most sophisticated - similar to the careful extraction of solid blocs of natural stone, whereby the original features and functional qualities of the component are preserved, i.e. reuse.

In this symposium, meant to be pragmatic without shunning the contemplative, we will focus first and foremost on the third approach.
The entire second session is dedicated to concrete examples, from the
US and the Netherlands, of practices which engage in value identification
and/or building components salvage. Studying these actors and their
day-to-day operations, will, to our view, also yield interesting lessons for
the DfD approach.

9
Deconstruction

Companies that are engaging in large scale salvage operations of reuseable building components are still rare, but their number will probably expand
in the years to come. It is interesting to observe how this echoes a larger phenomenon, the emergence of the remanufacturing industry.

Remanufacturing is defined as ‘the rebuilding of a product to specifications
of the original manufactured product using a combination of reused, repaired

and new parts’ (Wikipedia).
It is growing big in the automotive and aeronautic sector, under the impulse of specific measures, such as a French law from 2015 that forces every car mechanic in France to offer the remanufactured, second hand components as a (cheaper) alternative to the purchase of new component. It offers in any case a model for a thriving economical sector that is not relying on the consumption of raw materials, while equally avoiding the risk of putting all means of production and all ownership in the hands of a few omnipotent players (as under option 2).

Now it must also be observed that most of the products (engines, tires, copiers, cell-phones, …) that come into consideration for remanufacturing differ from buildings in that they had been serially produced originally. Even
if buildings contain numerous components produced in industrial series (lighting fixtures, door hinges, nuts, bolts and steel profiles, they are almost all unique, tailor-made to a specific site and answering specific functional and aesthetic requirements. If every construction site is unique, that means that every deconstruction site will be unique as well. As long as buildings will not become serial products, their careful dismantling will require ad-hoc experts, capable of adapting their course of action to circumstances. This means the activity will remain investment-heavy in terms of labour force.
At Rotor Deconstruction, we calculated that dismantling on average requires seven times more personnel than evacuating the same amount of materials using the ‘classical’, destructive methods with motorized equipment. Considering the cost of workforce this imposes serious limitations on the economic feasibility of deconstruction activities. But the argument can be turned around, and seen as an opportunity to create manual jobs, especially in dense city centres, where the disappearance of industrial activity contributes to high unemployment rates.

10
Rotor — Urban Mining, Salvaging Materials. Conference statement

The disparity of the built environment brings us to another topic, which is
the question of heritage. Looking at a building as an assemblage of elements that can be dismantled and reassembled again, possibly into totally new configurations forces us to reassess our understanding of architectural heritage. Until now, the focus in built heritage preservation has been largely on the conservation of the integrity of a design as it was devised by the architect, considered the main author of the assemblage. From that point of view, once the integrity of the building is lost, all is lost. Once you open up the possibility of looking at the heritage question on different scale levels, other forms of equally interesting authorship arise. It happens that we salvage marbles that are now extinct, whose quarries have been totally emptied, or that we reclaim industrial tiles produced with technologies no longer available in factories long closed. Building products such as these, carry not only their share of embodied energy or carbon that can be made useful again, but also embodied culture, that can charge a new project with
a supplementary meaning. The first session of the symposium, will be largely dedicated to these issues, in the context of a larger assessment of the relationship between architectural reuse and history.

We believe a thorough historical investigation into past forms of end-of-life-

Pictures by Rotor

care for buildings is necessary to address where we stand today and where we come from. Documentary evidence tells us that all past eras in the history of architecture featured far-reaching examples of building component reuse that are to be considered best practices from the point of view of resource-efficiency. Specific instances also offer inspiring examples for how this component reuse was organized economically and legally. History, finally, also teaches us how the disappearance of these age-old practices came about, somewhere in the course of the 20th-century, under the combined influence of increased real-estate pressure, an obsession for speed in demolition, the availability of power-machines and explosives, and fiscal constructions that encouraged accelerated building obsolescence.

11
Deconstruction

The last session of this symposium will feature a wide range of recent realizations that include either reclaimed components, or that are designed with future reclamation in mind. These presentations will offer the opportunity to gauge the pertinence and reproducibility of these approaches with the considerations about economics and salvage logistics in mind. But it will also show how designers compose functional assemblage while exploiting the embodied culture that these components carry along.

The architecture studio for which this symposium is the launching pad is equally entitled Deconstruction. It will combine the meticulous analysis of a series of study cases - one newly erected building that anticipated future disassembly, one that has been taken down and might be reassembled soon, and another one that is slated for - at least partial - demolition, with a series of specific design challenges with reclaimed components. The idea is to expose the students to all aspects of building component reclamation and reuse. From archival study over transport logistics to integration into a newly built assemblage, with all that this entails.

We wish to thank the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at
TU Delft for inviting us this semester, and for setting up this symposium, with the help of Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, in particular Dirk van den Heuvel and Victor Muñoz Sanz for hosting and co-organising, as well as Jacques Vink, who will assist us at teaching the studio.

Lionel Devlieger
Maarten Gielen
Rotor

12
Rotor — Urban Mining, Salvaging Materials. Conference statement
Pictures by Rotor
13
Deconstruction
Pictures by Rotor
14

Article 3
Definitions

For the purposes of this Directive, the following definitions shall apply:

1.‘Waste’ means any substance or object which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard;
[…]
13.‘Re-use’ means any operation by which products or components that are not waste are used again for the same purpose for which they were conceived;
[…]
16.‘Preparing for re-use’ means checking, cleaning or repairing recovery operations, by which products or components of products that have become waste are prepared so that they can be re-used without any other pre-processing;
17.‘Recycling’ means any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials or substances whether for the original or other purposes. It includes the reprocessing of organic material but does not include energy recovery and the reprocessing into materials that are to be used as fuels or for backfilling operations;
[…]


Article 4
Waste hierarchy

1.The following waste hierarchy shall apply as a
priority order in waste prevention and management
legislation and policy:
(a) prevention;
(b) preparing for re-use;
(c) recycling;
(d) other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; and
(e) disposal.

DIRECTIVE 2008/98/EC Of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008, article 4

15
Deconstruction

programme

Monday, April 24th

14:30Welcome by Dean Peter Russell
14:40Welcome by hosting chair / JBSC
Dick van Gameren / Dirk van den Heuvel
14:50Introduction by Rotor
Lionel Devlieger and Maarten Gielen
15:00–
17:30

Re-situating Reuse

How to understand the practices of off-site reuse against
the history of modern architecture and industrialized building? Why did off-site reuse became marginalized after WWII? And how to approach the topic from a heritage point of view? This session takes a historical look on urgent contemporary issues.

Lionel Devlieger (Engineer-architect and architectural historian, principal of Rotor, Brussels) — Demolition and
reuse in history. Examples from 18th, 19th and 20th
century Brussels

Annette Condello (Architectural historian, senior lecturer
at Curtin University, Perth) — Spolia as luxury

Stephanie Van de Voorde (VUB; engineer-architect and architectural historian) — The specificity of post-war

building materials

Wessel de Jonge (TU Delft, practicing architect and architectural heritage expert) — Components removal

and re-installation in modern heritage projects

16
Conference programme

Tuesday, April 25th

9:30–
12:00

Conditions for Productive Reuse

What logistic, legal and economic challenges lie ahead?
How can we make deconstruction and building component salvage work? What might be viable business models? Who are the allies, who the enemy? This session discusses the practicalities of deconstruction as opposed to demolition.

Anne Nicklin (Architect, Director of the Building Materials Reuse Association) — The professional building materials reuse sector in the US. Recent achievements and
challenges ahead

Ted Reiff (Founder and president of The ReUse People of America, Inc) — The Reuse People of America. Current business model and perspectives for development

Jan Jongert (Architect, founder of Superuse Architecten, Rotterdam) — SuperUse, Shortcutting material flows in
the Netherlands for two decades

14:00–
17:00

Future Reuse

What qualities are (re)introduced by designing with reused components? How to design for future reuse? How to anticipate future disassembly and productive deconstruction practices? This third session presents challenging and advanced examples in reuse design of today.

Izaskun Chinchilla (Architect, Principal Izaskun Chinchilla Architects; Senior Teaching Fellow and Senior Research Associate, Barlett School of Architecture) — Casa Solariega
and other projects

Mark Gorgolewski (Architect, Professor at Ryerson University, Toronto) — Resource Salvation - The Architecture of Reuse

Felix Heisel (Architect, head of research Professorship of Sustainable Construction Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and ETH Zurich’s Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), Singapore) — Building an Urban Mine. The example of

UMAR in Switzerland.

Marc Angst and Pascal Hentschel (NRS In Situ, Zurich) — Material Re-use in Winthertur, Switzerland

Eva Prats (Architect, Principal of Flores Prats, Barcelona) —
The discipline of the existing: Sala Beckett Theatre and Drama Centre in Barcelona

17
Deconstruction
Image courtesy OMA
Image courtesy of OMA; photography by Ossip van Duivenbode
18
Case: Timmerhuis in Rotterdam by OMA / Reinier de Graaf (2013-2015)

Timmerhuis in Rotterdam by OMA / Reinier de Graaf (2013-2015).
After winning a closed competition, the multifunctional complex (offices, appartments, public meeting rooms, museum) was realised with an eye on maximum flexibility and the future reuse of its building components.

Images courtesy of OMA; photography by Ossip van Duivenbode
19
Deconstruction
20
Case: Youth Hostel Ockenburgh in The Hague by Frank van Klingeren (1971-1974)

Youth Hostel Ockenburgh in The Hague by Frank van Klingeren (1971-1974). Built in steel, the structure allowed for its salvation by disassembling the building and temporarily storing its components in anticipation of its resurrection at another site in The Hague.

Images courtesy of HVE Architecten bv, Studio Leon Thier, & Stebru Transformatie B.V.
21
Deconstruction
22
Case: Youth Hostel Ockenburgh in The Hague by Frank van Klingeren (1971-1974)
Images courtesy of HVE Architecten bv, Studio Leon Thier, & Stebru Transformatie B.V.
23
Deconstruction
24
Case: Ministery of Social Affairs in The Hague by Herman Hertzberger (1979-1990)

Ministery of Social Affairs in The Hague by Herman Hertzberger (1979-1990). The office building of about 60.000 m2, exponent of welfare state policies and a classic example of Dutch Structuralism in architecture, is currently vacant and awaits redevelopment in combination with partial demolition.

Images courtesy of AHH / Herman Hertzberger
25
Deconstruction
Courtesy of AHH / Herman Hertzberger
26
Case: Ministery of Social Affairs in The Hague by Herman Hertzberger (1979-1990)

Demolition:
An engineering project to reduce a building, structure,
paved surface, or utility infrastructure through manual and/or machnized means, with or without the assistance
of explosive materials to piles of mixed rubble or debris. Demolition usually provides the quickest method of removing a facility and segregates the debris or rubble into various components for recycling wherever practicable.

Diven, Richard J., and Mark Shaurette (2010). Demolition. Practices, Technology, and Management. West Lafayette, Indiana (USA): Purdue University Press, p. 172.

The demolition and construction sector for England
as a whole accounts for around:
• 19% of the total national footprint
• 120 Million tonnes per year of waste production
• 420 million tonnes of materials consumption or 7 tonnes per person
• 30% of all road freight on UK roads
• Approximately one fifth of the national carbon footprint
The industry is the single largest contributor to the UK’s national waste stream. Nearly a third of this currently ends up in landfill.

“Generic Business Plan for a New UK Building Material Reuse Centre (BMRC).” BioRegional, April 2008, p. 17.

“Architecture must be a heart breaking art... Paint a picture, write a book, and you possess your creation forever,
even if it is no good. But design a building and you have it for twenty
years and then the wrecker takes
charge of the situation.”

“Wrecker’s reminiscences” New Yorker, 1931, as quoted in: Cairns, Stephen, and Anne M. Jacobs (2014). Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, p. 193.

27
Deconstruction

SPEAKERS

Lionel Devlieger is an engineer-architect and doctor of architectural history. He founded the association Rotor in 2005 with Maarten Gielen and Tristan Boniver. He was involved in the Usus/Usures exhibitions for the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2010 and OMA/Progress (2011) at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. He was curator, with Maarten Gielen, of the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2013) and editor of the resulting Behind the Green Door catalogue (2014). As a member of Rotor, in 2015 he was a recipient of the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture. Lionel Devlieger has taught architecture at the University of Ghent (BE), the University of Virginia (USA), the University of California, Berkeley (USA) and at the Sandberg Instituut (NL).

  • → Monday, April 24th, 14:50
  • → Monday, April 24th, 15:00

Maarten Gielen founded Rotor in 2005 with Tristan Boniver
and Lionel Devlieger. He has been involved in Rotor’s major exhibition and design projects ever since. He was curator, along with Lionel Devlieger, of the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2013). In 2014 Maarten Gielen coordinated in collaboration with Lionel Billiet and Renaud Haerlingen, the establishment of Rotor Deconstruction, an autonomous entity within Rotor (designed as a cooperative company) that takes care of the dismantling and resale of valuable
elements sourced from buildings slated for demolition. 
In 2015, Maarten Gielen received the Global Award for
Sustainable Architecture and the Rotterdam Maaskantprijs.

  • → Monday, April 24th, 14:50

Izaskun Chinchilla studied at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in Madrid from where she graduated with honours in 2001. In 2016 she completed her doctoral thesis, entitled “The Structure of the Ecological Revolution in Architecture”, in the same institution. She is also a Senior Teaching Fellow and Researcher at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Since 2001, Chinchilla has also been the driving force of her own practice. Its work has been exhibited extensively and has shown in the Venice Biennale on several occasions. Apart from several installations and small to medium range refurbishments, the practice also works on housing and museography projects along with urban planning commissions. Its largest undertaking to date is the refurbishment of the Garcimuñoz Castle in Cuenca, Spain. Demonstrating a thorough understanding of the historic context, this project manages to find the balance between a desire for new infrastructure and the need to preserve the existing built environment.

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 14:00

Annette Condello is a Senior Lecturer of Architecture at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Prior to her appointment, she was a postgraduate researcher at the National University of Mexico (UNAM). She completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia in 2009. Her research examines the architectural transformation of luxury in the ancient world and its impact on the modern and contemporary West. Annette is also exploring the architectural dialogue with cuisine, spoils, landscape and fashion in Europe and Australasia; and Italian modernism in Latin America. And luxury as sustainability. Her book The Architecture of Luxury was published by Ashgate in 2014.
And her latest catalogue essay on the ‘Cathedral, Abbey and Benedictine monastery’ appears in the Augmented Australia: Regenerating Lost Architecture 1914-2014, Fundamentals 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. Recently, she co-edited with S. Lehmann the following book: Sustainable Lina: Lina Bo Bardi’s Adaptive Reuse Projects (Springer, 2016).

  • → Monday, April 24th, 15:00

Dr. Mark Gorgolewski is a Professor in the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University in Toronto. He
has worked for many years as an architect, researcher and sustainable building consultant in Canada and the UK. He has been a director of the Canada Green Building Council and chair of theAssociation for Environment Conscious Building and is a LEED Accredited Professional. Dr Gorgolewskihas written many papers and books on the subject of sustainable built environments. Currently areas of research include building performance, reuse of components and materials in buildings, and design for urban agriculture. He was co-curator of the exhibition “Carrot City: Designing for Urban Agriculture,” which has travelled around the world, and is co-author of a Carrot City book and web site. Mark has participated in various sustainable building projects, including a winning design for the CMHC Equilibrium (net zero energy) Housing Competition and is also co-recipient of the 2007-2008 ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award and recipient of the 2012 H.A. Krentz
Research Award from the CISC.

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 14:00

Marc Angst and Pascal Hentschel are part of the team of NRS in Situ, a Zürich based office working on the direct re-use of building materials and modular construction. The office makes part of Baubüro in situ, founded by Barbara Buser who initiated the Bauteilbörse Schweiz in 1995. The office is currently working on a project in Winterthur, Switzerland. The objective is to plan the addition of stories with only re-used building material. The location is adjacent to a large industrial area which is beeing demolished; materials are being saved, and a harvest map drawn. The final aim is to include the several local players in the planning and building process. Collaterally the project will be scientifically accompaniyed by the ETH (Institute of Technology in Zurich) regarding Material flows, circular economies and grey energy.

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 14:00
28
Speakers

Felix Heisel is co-principal of Heisel/Hebel Architekten, also working as head of research and PhD candidate at the Professorship of Sustainable Construction at the Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, and ETH Zurich’s Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore. He previously held the position of research coordinator at the Professorship of Architecture and Construction at ETH Zürich in Switzerland, and has taught and lectured in Zürich and Singapore, as well as the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development in Addis Ababa, the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and the Berlin University of the Arts. His teaching and research has been published in books and academic journals such as Building from Waste (with Dirk E. Hebel and Marta H. Wisniewska, Birkhäuser, 2014) or Lessons of Informality (with Bisrat Kifle, Birkhäuser, 2016).

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 14:00

Wessel de Jonge MSc (1957) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology in 1985. During his education and as extraordinary researcher at TU Delft and TU Eindhoven he has been dedicated to the survey of early 20th century architecture and the preservation and adaptive re-use of such buildings. He is the co-founder of DOCOMOMO International, a worldwide network of architectural historians, architects and preservation specialists in this field.
As a practicing architect he realised a.o. the restoration of Gerrit Rietveld´s Biennale Pavilion in Venice of 1953-1954, and various schemes for social housing and educational buildings. Wessel de Jonge Architecten has a particular expertise in the field of adaptive re-use of buildings, often in a dynamic urban context, and combined with newly designed structures. The studio has been in charge of the restoration and adaptive re-use of the former Sanatorium Zonnestraal of 1928-31 (with Bierman Henket Architects), the master planning and coordination of the conversion of the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam (1928-31) and the former Technical Schools in Groningen (1923), the restoration of the St.Jobs warehouse (1914), and the HUF building (1953) in Rotterdam, the conversion of the Social Security Building GAK (1959) into housing for young professionals and the renewal of the 1950s National Aerospace Laboratories NLR in Amsterdam. Last year, the restoration of a former 1956 vocational school in Amsterdam to accommodate the Cygnus Grammar School was awarded the national Golden Phoenix prize. The Van Nelle Factory has been inscribed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO in June 2014. Wessel de Jonge Architects is a partner in various projects in Brussels and Antwerp, and involved with the revitalization of the 1938 Olympic Stadium in Helsinki.

  • → Monday, April 24th, 15:00

Jan Jongert studied Architecture in Delft and graduated at
the Academy of Architecture Rotterdam in 2003. As cofounder of Superuse Studios in Rotterdam (formerly known as 2012Architecten) he designs interiors and buildings and develops strategies to facilitate the transition to a sustainable society. Jan focuses at developing tools and processes and realises projects that empower local exchange and production, as an alternative to transporting our resources, products and components around the globe. Jan Jongert specialised in the behaviour of flows in interior, industrial and urban environment. Key projects are Villa Welpeloo (2009), Recyclicity MSP (2010) and various webplatforms (Superuse.org, Cyclifier.org and Harvestmap.org).
Jan Jongert currently teaches master programs in flows at
the Academy of architecture in Rotterdam, the TU in Delft
and for Food and Process technology in The Hague.

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 9:30

Anne Nicklin serves as the executive Director of the Building Materials Reuse Association, a national non-profit organization dedicated to the recovery and reuse of building materials. In this role, Anne has brought about the development of the first nationwide curriculum for training deconstruction workers and complementary professional credential for all building removal contractors. In addition, Anne oversees the daily operations of the organization, has expanded the BMRA’s online directory, and led the development of the reusewood.org resource site in collaboration with the American and Canadian Wood Councils. Prior to taking on her current role, Anne had more than 10 years of experience providing sustainable architecture and construction consulting services within the academic, residential and commercial sectors. Anne received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin and a Masters of Architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 9:30

Eva Prats is architect for the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 1992. After a long collaboration at Enric Miralles’ office, Eva establishes Flores & Prats Architects together with Ricardo Flores in Barcelona in 1998. The office has worked on reoccupations of old structures, as well as on neighbours’ participation in the design process of urban public spaces, and on social housing and its capacity to create community. Flores & Prats obtained the Grand Award for the Best Work in Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts in London 2009, the City of Barcelona Prize 2016, and has been exhibited at the Biennale di Architettura di Venezia 2012, 2014 and 2016. Eva Prats is professor at the School of Architecture of Barcelona
and RMIT Melbourne.

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 14:00

Ted Reiff is the founder and president of The ReUse People
of America (TRP), an organization that aim to reduce the solid waste stream and change the way the built environment is renewed by salvaging building materials and distributing them for reuse. Prior to founding TRP in 1995, Ted was managing partner with an investment-banking firm that provided financial services to young technology companies. Now, in addition to guiding TRP’s national expansion program, he consults with private companies and government bodies on a variety of demolition and waste diversion projects. A graduate of Ohio State University and a licensed demolition contractor, Ted served three terms as board president of I Love a Clean San Diego and is an advisor to Urban Habitat Chicago.

  • → Tuesday, April 25th, 9:30

Stephanie Van de Voorde (Msc and PhD in Engineering Sciences: Architecture) is specialized in 20th-century architectural and construction history in Belgium, focusing
on building materials and building actors. After her PhD on Building in Concrete in Belgium (1890-1975). Interplay of Knowledge, Experiment and Innovation (Ghent University, 2011), she conducted several research projects, for instance on the history of architectural education in Belgium and post-war construction materials and building techniques (www.postwarbuildingmaterials.be).
From 2013 onwards, Stephanie works at the Department of Architectural Engineering of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel as
a post-doctoral researcher and research professor. Stephanie
is on the editorial board of the bimonthly journal M&L. Monumenten, Landschappen en Archeologie. She is part
of the Organising Committee and Scientific Committee of
the 6th International Congress on Construction History
(Brussels, 2018, www.6icch.org).

  • → Monday, April 24th, 15:00
29
Deconstruction

LOCATION

Delft University of Technology

Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

Julianalaan 134

2628 BL Delft

The Netherlands

View on map

REGISTER

If you wish to attend the conference, please register by sending an email to: Bakema-BK@tudelft.nl

Picture by Rotor

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

Thomas A. Edison

30

COLOPHON

Organization:

Visiting Professors ROTOR, Lionel Devlieger and Maarten Gielen of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft Chair of Architecture and Dwelling, Dick van Gameren

In collaboration with:
Jaap Bakema Study Centre / Het Nieuwe Instituut, Dirk van den Heuvel and Victor M. Sanz

Graphic and webdesign:

Loraine Furter

COLOPHON

Editors

  • Lionel Devlieger
  • Dirk van den Heuvel
  • Víctor M. Sanz

The conference Deconstruction and this publication are part of the Visiting Professorship of Rotor — Lionel Devlieger and Maarten Gielen — at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, in collaboration with the Jaap Bakema Study Centre (JBSC) and Het Nieuwe Instituut, in Spring 2017.

Representing a new approach to contemporary architectural practice, Rotor develops critical positions on design, material resources and waste through research, exhibitions, writings and conferences. Core element of their professorship is a special studio, focused on the deconstruction of modernist and contemporary buildings slated for demolition, to make their components available for a redesign assignment.

With the Visiting Professors programme The Faculty of Architecture and The
Built Environment attracts nationally
and internationally renowned designers to contribute to the renewal of research and education with their outlooks
and networks.

Founded in October 2013, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre is a collaborative research initiative between Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and the Faculty
of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.

With thanks to

Heritage deparment Het Nieuwe Instituut, HVE Architecten bv, Studio Leon Thier, Stebru Transformatie B.V., MRC Development, Gemeente Rotterdam, OMA, Herman Hertzberger / AHH, Floris Alkemade / Atelier Rijksbouwmeester.

Illustration credits

  • Olivier Beart
  • Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam
  • Herman Hertzberger / AHH
  • HVE Architecten bv /
    Studio Leon Thier
  • Sebastian van Damme
  • Ossip van Duivenbode
  • OMA
  • Rotor

Printer

  • Gillis, Belgium


Design

  • Loraine Furter

This publication was designed with
re-used and re-usable materials. The cover’s cardboard and the inside paper are both recycled. The layout tools and the fonts are all open source — at the core of which is the idea of re-use, modification and re-distribution. The design was made with HTML, CCS and javascript languages, which made it possible to use the same “source” elements for all the output formats: everything is contained in the website and each element is transformed for each specific format (screens, printed booklet and poster), in different configurations. Anyone can generate this booklet and the poster directly from the website, using the print button.

Recycled papers

  • Grey cardboard
  • Cyclus Offset

Open source fonts

  • League Gothic, by The League
    of Movable Type
  • Work Sans, by Wei Huang

Studio Credits

Visiting Professors

  • Lionel Devlieger
  • Maarten Gielen

Hosting chair

  • Dick van Gameren,
  • Architecture and Dwelling

Coordinator

  • Dirk van den Heuvel (head JBSC)

Coordinator JBSC / Het Nieuwe Instituut

  • Victor M. Sanz

Guest teacher

  • Jacques Vink

Student assistant

  • Arthur Schoonenberg

Experts Heritage,
Het Nieuwe Instituut

  • Ellen Smit
  • Suzanne Mulder

Students

  • Amanda Schuurbiers
  • Anna Gunnink
  • Ben Summers
  • Duong Vu Hong
  • Gjalt van Koten
  • Helena Andersson
  • Kasia S Soltysiak
  • Melanie Kwaks
  • Michelle Bettman
  • Monsicha Kanittaprasert
  • Nutcha Somboonthanasarn
  • Serah Calitz
  • Steven van der Woude
  • Tanya Tsui
  • Virginia Santilli

The topic of this conference the 2017 International Symposium of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment — TU Delft, with visiting professors ROTOR, is off-site reuse
in architecture, a practice that involves salvaging components and materials from buildings that have reached the end of their life cycle, in order to reuse
them elsewhere. Off-site reuse has been a common practice for centuries; however, during the twentieth century it became a forgotten art as most buildings
were built with no idea about reuse and the concomitant question of sustainability. Today, the idea of off-site
reuse is once again gaining momentum as the linear modes of materials consumption proper to the
age of industrialization are being questioned.

Yet, in a highly streamlined building industry, many obstacles and tenacious routines need to be overcome
to make these practices more than marginal again. Legislations need to be rewritten, certification protocols
to be reinvented; designers need to change habits, engineers to rethink component assembly technologies, etc. In the past decades, deconstruction professionals, designers and other experts have pushed this agenda
and made some valuable progress. This symposium will bring several of these actors together in order to gauge where we stand now, what lies ahead and what
progress is within reach, in terms of engineering,
design and overall policy.

The breached topics will fall under the following headings:

— What might off-site reuse mean in terms
of building culture, heritage and social value?
— How to deconstruct existing buildings
slated for demolition practically? What are
the technological, logistical and adminis-
trative implications?
— What design challenges, but also opportunities lie in
the integration of existing components in new structures?
— How to design buildings in such a way
that you maximize its potential for later reuse, on site, but also
off-site? Is the “legolization”
of the building industry
within reach? And
is it desirable?

LOCATION

Faculty of Architecture
and the Built Environment,
TU Delft

Oost Serre

Julianalaan 134

2628 BL Delft

The Netherlands

SYMPOSIUM
April 24-25, 2017

INFORMATION
AND REGISTRATION
www.deconstruction
conference.nl

Graphic design: Loraine Furter
Reuse this poster for architectural models

LOCATION

Faculty of Architecture and the
Built Environment, TU Delft

Oost Serre

Julianalaan 134

2628 BL Delft

The Netherlands

SYMPOSIUM
April 24-25, 2017

INFORMATION
AND REGISTRATION
www.deconstruction
conference.nl

Graphic design: Loraine Furter
Reuse this poster for architectural models