CIRCULATING MATTERS

Circulating matters has been an ongoing case study in the Circular Construction Lab for designing and documenting methods of deconstruction and reuse that began as a project taking apart an old house in Ithaca.

Following the deconstruction, some of the old timber from the house was selected to build a pavilion on Cornell University's Arts demonstrating the potential of material that often is wasted in demolition.

I was hired initially in march at the second deconstruction phase where we worked to systematically take apart the pavilion without damaging any parts. Everything is assembled and disassembled with screws, and we were even able to reuse the hardware. The foundations were 5-foot ground screws which we removed manually.

I worked with Tamer Shalabi and Andrew Boghossian over the following months to refinish and treat all of the wood for a more permanent final destination. We used linseed oil and mushroom based bio finish to insure it would be safe to give back to the earth at the end of its life-cycle.

After redesigning the pavilion for its new location, we did as much pre-assembly as possible in Ithaca in late July to ensure a smooth and quick construction process later on. We stacked and secured the pre-assembled chunks in a U-Haul and brought them to the final build location.

After a friend of the Lab from a design build company graciously installed ground screws for foundation, our team of three rebuilt the pavilion in just two days. It's now a part of Art Omi's sculpture park and can be found in the Architecture section of the park.