This guide is intended for architects, builders, designers, developers, and all others who have an interest in sustainable construction and circular economy for the built environment. This guide is set up as general reference resource for those interested in design for deconstruction and presents both general principles and practical examples of how to implement design for deconstruction in the design and construction phases of a building project.
This guidebook is not a complete reference of every possible way of implementing design for deconstruction but is intended to give sufficient detail on the general practices of DfD such that the principles and practical solutions might be applied to a wide range of light-wood frame building projects.
About the contributors
This guide was produced with the generous support from the Foresty Innovation Investment (FII) and the Canadian Wood Council and was prepared by Kaia Nielsen-Roine and Annalisa Meyboom at the University of British Columbia.
This research was conducted primarily at UBC Point Grey (Vancouver) campus, which sits on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) First Nation.
Authors
Kaia Nielsen-Roine | is a PHD student in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. This project developed from Kaia’s M.Arch thesis project (Seven Generations of Wood).
Annalisa Meyboom | is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. Her area of expertise is integrated design of architecture and engineering. Her research and teaching looks at applications of technology in our environment where the highly technical meets the human environment. Her areas of teaching emphasize the ability to integrate the highly technical, the beautiful and the environmental simultaneously and seamlessly into a built form. She believes it is the ability to work with all these media fluently that creates projects of critical relevance.
Her research areas investigate the impact of advanced computing on the language of wood design and the design of future infrastructures and their critical and catalytic relationships to public space. She is Director of the Transportation Infrastructure & Public Space Lab (TIPSlab) as well as a practicing engineer with a civil engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and holds a Masters of Architecture from the University of British Columbia. Her background prior to architecture was in bridge engineering where she was a Senior Structural Engineer and Project Manager.
Research Assistant & Graphics
Hemi Patel | is a Master of Architecture student in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Masters of Science in Architectural Research Practices from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor Degree of History & Theory of Architecture from Carleton University. Over the years, she has become acutely aware of the ecological impacts of architecture and how disjointed our built environment and communities have become from the ecology of the Earth. She has been pursuing new ways to design, make and rediscover our connection to the world and looking “in-between” the lines for inspiration. Bio-based materials, Material Entanglement and regenerative design practices are a keen interests and areas of research of hers.
External Reviewers & Contributors
Envelope Review
Graeme Finch | RDH
Greg Johnson | UBC SALA
Michelle Mazzotta | KIWI Construction
Lindsey Tourand | Tourand Engineering
Facilities & Construction Support
Graham Entwistle | UBC SALA
Derek Fiddler | BCIT
International Timberframes