Last night I got a call from US EPA Region 9 congratulating us on winning Honorable Mention in the EPA Lifecycle Building Challenge 3.

Lifecycle building is the design of building materials, components, information systems, and management practices to create buildings that facilitate and anticipate future changes to and eventual adaptation or dismantling for recovery of all systems, components, and materials.

Designing for reuse is the ultimate way to preserve the embodied energy in building materials. It’s about more than keeping material out of the landfill, it’s about keeping labor and time and vision and history out of the landfill. We embody more than our resources into wood and metal. We embody our lives, our culture our community into our homes.

Lifecycle building incorporates into the design the ability to adapt to future conditions, but included in that adaptability and conservation is preservation. Reclaimed Space is unique however, in that our incorporated adaptability is not in the form of designed-in deconstruction, but rather mobility and modular construction. We incorporate the deconstruction and reuse on the front end, conserving and preserving structures never considered for use beyond their initial implementation.

Our’s is simply another approach to reducing construction waste, to providing better and more appropriate housing, to standing taller and looking further towards sustainable living.