Disaster Relief Mobile Home Wins First Lifecycle Building Challenge

SAN FRANCISCO, California, September 21, 2007 (ENS) - An energy efficient mobile home that can be used for immediate disaster relief housing for first responders and survivors and later be converted to permanent housing has won the inaugural Lifecycle Building Challenge competition.

Ideas from the design contest are intended to inspire the building industry to reuse more of the 100 million tons of construction and demolition debris sent each year to landfills in the United States.

The winning structure, as yet unbuilt, was designed by Michael Berk, a professor with the Mississippi State University School of Architecture.

Called the GreenMobile™, the affordable, factory-built unit meets the International Residential Code for housing with structurally sound foundations that demount for easy relocation. Units are designed to function in a place with a limited infrastructure or no utility grid in place.

The project incorporates systematic strategies for growth and change as family structures grow and change. "Pre-fabricated plug-in" rooms, plug-in porches, and surface mounted wiring are featured in the design.

Lifecycle Building Challenge partners - the U.S. EPA, the Building Materials Reuse Association, the American Institute of Architects and West Coast Green - invited professionals and students nationwide to submit designs and ideas that support cost-effective disassembly and anticipate future use of building materials.

Green Building Blocks, the competition sponsor, provided cash awards to student winners, and Green Building in Alameda County, California provided the awards.

The first award winners were named during a ceremony today at the West Coast Green Conference in San Francisco by U.S. EPA Assistant Administrator Susan Bodine, along with the American Institute of Architects President R.K. Stewart, and Building Materials Reuse Association President Brad Guy.

"Reusing valuable building materials conserves resources and reduces greenhouse gas emissions," said Bodine. "Designing buildings for adaptability, disassembly and local reuse is an important environmental protection strategy."

Honorable Mentions were awarded to Anthony Piede a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta for flexible modular housing with a steel bearing pin foundation, and Jeff Wagner of the Nail Extractor in Charleston, South Carolina for a nail and staple removal tool eases building disassembly. The tool allows for easy, single-handed operation, using jaws that exert increasing gripping pressure in proportion to the resistance encountered during extraction.

Lifecycle building maximizes material recovery to reverse the trend of disposing of large quantities of construction and demolition debris in landfills. Reusing building components also reduces energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing and transporting materials.

In the United States, buildings consume 60 percent of total materials flow, excluding food and fuel, and account for 33 percent of the solid waste stream. Building renovation and demolition accounts for 91 percent of the construction and demolition debris generated each year, while new construction accounts for only nine percent.

Between 2000 and 2030, 27 percent of existing buildings will be replaced and 50 percent of the total building stock will be constructed.

These issues can be addressed by planning for a building or building component's eventual deconstruction or adaptation. By creating building components that can be easily recovered and reused, materials are kept at their highest value, resulting in reduced consumption of energy and resources.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.