Design for disassembly can save waste and stop housing supply problems

At this year’s CES there were so many great gadgets, technologies and new approaches to old problems, but none were more compelling than Panasonic’s design of autonomous disassembly. The program, which will start later this year, will help device manufacturers promote circularity.

To achieve this, Panasonic not only had to invest in developing the robotics and supporting software, but also redesigned its products to bring the concept to life. That investment in research and development was significant and its importance is only magnified by the fact that this investment means fewer devices will be sold as the company develops circularity and reduces the need for brand new devices.

Why would a company do this? To start, we must try to limit the waste of the device industry and the disposable device culture that is so comfortable here. The EPA reported that approximately 11 to 13 million refrigerated appliances reach the end of their life each year. Assuming most of them are simply thrown away, that’s a lot of waste.

That’s why Panasonic is now redesigning some of its products for repair, reuse and recycling, thinking about disassembly by analyzing the overall product architecture, fasteners and materials. To take on this task, the company uses AI and robotics, both for the redesign and disassembly process.

Centered around a “Disassembly Cyber-Physical System” that visualizes the disassembly of products to simplify it, it simulates and optimizes disassembly actions along with the time required using 3D CAD. The results of the simulations are used for designing new products and for training the robots.

This high level of technology can also help better separate materials such as plastics and metals, supporting the recycling process. Panasonic sees it as a way to both extend the life of products and recover resources.

Disassembly design for housing

What could this mean for housing construction? What if it were a design model for all future architecture?

The current built environment is undergoing a renaissance. Office buildings that were previously important and valuable real estate are now vacant. It was never imagined that these buildings would be anything other than what they were originally built for.

Brian Gaudio, founder of Pittsburgh-based modular home designer and builder Moduleagrees.

“People are primarily cost sensitive,” he said. “Developers try to build as cheaply as possible.”

Gaudio founded his company with the concept of offering an affordable modular starting point that can be supplemented with other modules as the user’s needs change, made possible by the modular aspect of the design.

Now the conversion to new building functions is happening thanks to the ingenuity of architects and engineers working together on adaptive reuse projects. Although Gaudio said buildings are built so robustly that you can do surgical work on them, adaptive reuse is still a huge challenge. Projects across the country include churches, schools, banks and parking lots being converted into homes to help solve supply problems.

Panasonic’s design for assembly and disassembly is said to be next level thinking regarding new construction.

Just as Gaudio tried, industry consultant Mark Lee said: “I think modularity is one method to achieve this, but there has to be a design intent first.”

This also follows in the footsteps of Panasonic’s method of using robotics in redesigning its products. Using this approach would extend the lifespan of buildings and reduce costs and waste.

A recent report, Lifespans of demolished buildings in American and European citiesit looked at 15,000 demolished buildings in nine American cities and four European cities. The report found that the average age of a demolished building in American cities was 81 years, while for European cities it was 65 years.

The report has been published to raise awareness of building demolition and highlight the factors that can cause a building to be considered outdated or unusable.

The global architectural firm, Executioneris a leader in the field of adaptive reuse space and has already renovated dozens of buildings. Steven Paynter, Global Practice Area Leader and director of the company, said the practice of design for disassembly is already a construction requirement in Europe and has been for more than a decade.

European building codes are evolving with standards such as ISO 20887 and EU initiatives to reduce waste and resource depletion by designing buildings for their entire life cycle. The codes focus on the use of modular construction, reversible connections instead of permanent adhesives, and the use of appropriate materials that can be insulated, such as solid wood.

Paynter said the practice is gaining traction in North America, especially where a building’s concrete can be reused, which accounts for about 85% of its carbon. This sustainable approach does require that the building can be taken apart with all its constituent materials, all being mechanically secured so that the building can be dismantled in the same way it was built.

From his experience, this is mainly determined by the location of a building.

“Everyone is willing to make compromises if that’s where they want to be,” Paynter said.

The future of building design

Designing buildings is not easy. There are enormous constraints on costs, timelines, materials and geography, but the future holds great promise for more advanced, adaptable design.

In Europe, where disassembly design is in full swing, builders must look for new solutions as traditional solutions fail to deliver, which also means labor must learn new skills and processes.

In Brownsville, Texas, Nick Mitchell-Bennett founded a nonprofit community center development group Come dream, come builda model to help first-time homebuyers purchase a home with a smaller floor plan that they can add to later.

DreamBuild homes start at a size that meets a family’s current needs, but can later be expanded without complete replacement or demolition using remote modular construction.

It is a step forward for traditional thinking about the built environment. Paynter admits there is no easy way to do this, but Gensler tests buildings at the design stage for future practicalities. Some of the design practices to pay attention to are the shape of a building, the way floor plates are used, and creating shallower plans for greater flexibility.

Gensler’s experience with adaptive reuse informs how it designs new buildings as it identifies what is a good conversion candidate and why, such as windows on all sides, or location in a good neighborhood.

“We cannot increase the cost of the building now to create something that may or may not happen in the future,” he added. “We have to have a really good project now that will enable a good project in the future. That’s the trick.”

Paynter is optimistic that the design hacks his company is beginning to understand will make buildings easier to disassemble and turn into something else.

“Twenty years from now you should start to see the benefit of what we’ve learned and what we’re doing as an industry today,” he said.