Davis, A. (2022). Industrialising housing to meet circular goals: a cradle-to-cradle assessment in combination with design for disassembly and building layers. Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecture (pp. 636-644), Valencia, Spain.

The current lack of sustainable and affordable housing is a global issue which has reached a crisis point. Traditional construction approaches used to solve sustainability issues in housing often contravene affordability, and, as a result, if either of these two aims is achieved, it is often to the detriment of the other. The application of Design for Disassembly (DfD) in combination with Industrialised Construction (IC) can simultaneously provide environmentally and economically sustainable solutions to these ongoing housing challenges. However, the application of DfD and the planning of varying lifespans for different building components raises issues with the conventional Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which is used to quantify environmental impacts of the construction.

This paper first provides an overview of DfD and IC and outlines the importance of their application to provide resource efficient, affordable housing and how Shearing Layers concept can extend the building lifespan and better ensure a sustainable End-of-Life (EoL). The issue in applying a conventional Whole Building LCA methodology will then be discussed, and an outline as to how this can be adapted to align with the Shearing Layers concept in housing. The objectives of this paper will be achieved through a literature review, covering the theoretical principles of DfD and the key ISO standards related to LCA. Based on the literature and theory, an aggregated LCA methodology is proposed which will be applied to case studies in future investigations by the author.

The result of the discussion reveals potential conflict between construction in practice and applying Shearing Layers and the adapted Whole Building LCA. The long-term aim of the on-going research is to empower technical stakeholders — architects, contractors, and government actors — to make impactful design decisions throughout the building process to provide more sustainable and affordable housing on a mass-scale.