The United States Environmental Protection Agency announced winners of the third annual Lifecycle Building Challenge today.

The term Lifecycle Building refers to design that takes into consideration disassembly and deconstruction, or in other words, constructing buildings that can be recycled. Each year, 100 million tons of construction and demolition debris is added to landfills, making it responsible for about 40 percent of the waste stream. The EPA recently reported that doubling the reuse and recycling of construction and demolition debris would result in an emissions savings of 150 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, equal to the entire annual carbon emissions from the state of North Carolina.

The Lifecycle Building Challenge is a national web-based competition sponsored by the EPA,  the American Institute of Architects, West Coast Green, the Collaborative for High Performance Schools and StopWaste.org.

“Designing buildings and building products with front-end lifecycle thinking is the key to real green building,” said Lisa Heinzerling, associate administrator for EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, in a press release. “These innovators are great examples of how we can build sustainable structures that help meet the needs of this and future generations.”

And the winners are …

[Un] Modular Designfor Deconstruction by David Fleming. This student entry from the University of Cincinatti is a design for a construction trade school and is “a temporary resting place for materials to be traded, upgraded and reused” that shows a building’s  potential to evolve over time.

Aboretum and Research Visitor’s Center by Kira Gould, William McDonough and Partners. This entry from Charlottesville, Va won in the professional-built category. It also won an Outstanding Achievement Award  for Best Greenhouse Gas Reduction. The architects strove to incorporate the surrounding forest into the lifecycle of the building by emphasizing biological materials that would break down and simply return to the soil.

Modular Temporary Construction Wall by Douglas Spear, owner of Envy Modular Wall Systems, LLC. This entry from Las Vegas, Nevada won in the product category, professional -built. The panels of this temporary wall system reusable and recyclable with zero waste. The system will be used in the construction of the MGM Mirage City Center in Las Vegas and is expected to conserve more than 100 tons of construction debris.

ReAnimate LA: Center for Ecological and Urban Recovery by Hayley Stewart from Pomona, Ca. This entry won an Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Green Job Creation. The building is meant to introduce visitors to the L.A. State Historic Park  and will be a role model for the themes of green design it represents.

School M.O.D by Ikue Nomora, Vienna University of Technology and Yosuke Kawai, University of Pennsylvania. This entry from the student level won for best school design. The design combines Modular , Open and Dual structural systems to allow for future growth.

Photos from http://www.lifecyclebuilding.org/.

By Amelia Harnish