Design For Disassembly Can Rescue Waste And Stop Housing Supply Issues

At CES this year there were so many amazing gadgets, technologies and new approaches to old problems, but none was more compelling than Panasonic’s design of autonomous disassembly. The program, launching later this year, helps the appliance manufacturer promote circularity.

To do it, Panasonic had to invest not only in the development of the robotics and the supporting software, but the company also has to redesign its products to bring the concept to life. That investment in the research and development was significant and its significance is only elevated by the fact that this investment will mean selling fewer appliances as the company develops circularity and reduces the need for brand new appliances.

Why would a company do this? For starters, to try to limit the waste of the appliance industry and the culture of disposable appliances that is so comfortable here. The EPA reported that about 11 to 13 million refrigerated appliances reach end of life annually. Assuming that most of them are just discarded, that’s a lot of waste.

So, Panasonic is now redesigning a number of its products for repair, reuse and recycling, thinking about disassembly by analyzing the overall product architecture, fasteners, and materials. To take on the task, the company is using AI and robotics for both the process of the redesign and for the disassembly.

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

This high level of engineering also can help better separate materials like plastics and metals, which supports the recycling process. Panasonic sees it as an avenue to both longer product lifespans and resource recovery.

Disassembly Design For Housing

What could this mean for housing? What if it was a model of design for all architecture moving forward?

Today’s built environment is undergoing a renaissance. Office buildings that were previously important and valuable real estate are now sitting vacant. These buildings were never imagined to be anything other than what they were originally built to do.

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

“People are first cost sensitive,” he said. “Developers are trying to build as cheap as they can.”

Gaudio founded his company on the concept of offering an affordable modular starting point that could be added to with other modules as the user’s needs changed, facilitated by the modular aspect of the design.

Now, converting to new building functions is happening with the ingenuity of architects and engineers that collaborate on adaptive reuse projects. While Gaudio said that buildings are built so robustly that you can surgically work on them, adaptive reuse is still an immense challenge. Projects across the country include churches, schools, banks and parking lots that are being converted into housing to help with the supply issues.

Panasonic’s design for assembly and disassembly would be next level thinking in regard to new building construction.

Just as Gaudio attempted, industry advisor Mark Lee said, “I think modularity is a method to achieve it but there must be design intent first.”

This also follows in the footsteps of Panasonic’s method to use robotics in the redesign of its products. Using this approach would help the longevity of buildings, reducing costs and waste.

A recent report, Lifetimes of Demolished Buildings in U.S. and European Cities, looked at 15,000 demolished buildings in nine U.S. cities and four European cities. The report found that the average age of a demolished building in the U.S. cities was 81, while for the European cities it was 65.

The report was published to help raise awareness of building demolition and point to what factors might make a building deemed outdated or unusable.

The global architecture firm, Gensler, has been a leader in the adaptive reuse space, already converting dozens of buildings. Steven Paynter, global practice area leader and principal at the firm, said that the practice of design for disassembly is already a building requirement in Europe and has been for more than a decade.

European building codes are evolving with standards like ISO 20887 and EU initiatives, to reduce waste and resource depletion by designing buildings for their entire lifecycle. The codes focus on using modular construction, reversible connections instead of permanent adhesives, and using the right materials that can be isolated like mass timber.

Paynter said the practice is catching on more in North America, especially where the concrete from a building can be reused, which represents about 85% of the carbon. This sustainable approach does require being able to take the building apart by all of its component materials with all of them being mechanically fastened so the building can be disassembled the same way it was constructed.

From his experience, this is mostly driven by the location of a building.

“Everyone is willing to compromise if it is where they want to be,” Paynter said.

The Future Of Building Design

Designing buildings isn’t easy. There are enormous constraints from cost, timelines, materials, geography, but the future has a lot of promise for more sophisticated, adaptable design.

In Europe where the design for disassembly is underway, builders have to seek new solutions because traditional ones don’t deliver, which also means labor has to learn new skills and processes.

In Brownsville, TX, Nick Mitchell-Bennett has created nonprofit community home development group Come Dream, Come Build, a model for getting first time homebuyers into a home with a smaller floorplan that they can add on to later.

DreamBuild homes start at a size that meets a family’s current needs but can expand later without full replacement or demolition by using modular, offsite construction.

It’s a step forward for traditional thinking about the built environment. Paynter admits there is no easy way to do it, but Gensler is testing buildings in the design phase for future practicalities. Some of the design practicalities to pay attention to are the shape of a building, how floor plates are used, and creating shallower plans for more flexibility.

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

“We cannot increase the cost of the building now to make something that may or may not happen in the future,” he added. “We need to have a really good project now that allows for a good project in the future. That is the trick.”

Paynter is optimistic that the design hacks his firm is starting to understand will help make buildings easier to disassemble and change into something else.

“In 20 years, you should start to see the benefit of what we have learned and what we are doing today as an industry,” he said.