I’m sure we’ve all witnessed an office building or home being torn down. Sometimes it’s to make way for a parking structure, a new road, or even occasionally some green space. But more often than not, it seems that older buildings are destroyed so that a newer building can be constructed in exactly the same spot. And instead of harvesting and reusing salvageable materials from that torn down building, these items end up in a landfill.
Seeing all of this waste made Syracuse, NY-based D-Build want to find a way to connect people with reusable building materials. D-Build acts as an online community, allowing users to submit information about “deconstructing buildings” and offers a marketplace where reclaimed materials (and products that are created from reclaimed materials) are sold. The site also aims to keep history alive, encouraging users to share “personal stories and historic records” of the building they have deconstructed. Although the site is relatively small, it already has a great network of supporting businesses and universities in the Syracuse area.
The concept of deconstruction is not a new one — there are organizations that educate members in ways to reuse and recycle building materials and connect them with other organizations and companies that work under a similar model, and there are businesses that sell salvaged items to the public to reduce landfill waste and offer affordable building materials to the community. Hopefully the idea will catch on and all of those new condos going up in a city near you will have some history built into them.
Story via GOOD
