This 3rd of 3 articles celebrates two COTE® Top winning projects and includes an extensive list of AIA and external resources to help firms integrate circular materials practices into their workflows and generally learn more. Thanks to all who contributed stories.
MASS Moca Building 6
2024 COTE® Top Winner | Architect: Bruner/Cott Architects | Location: North Adams, Massachusetts
Link to full project page >
The removal of floors and walls is approached as an operation of architectural cut-and-fill. As material was removed through these sculptural edits, a careful site salvage program was used to stockpile and reuse brick, stone, finish wood, and structural elements to transform the building. MASS MoCA’s Building 6 was constructed for $200 per square foot (in 2015 dollars), evidence that the project was designed with economy in mind. This is an order of magnitude lower than most contemporary art museum budgets. The primary strategies in meeting that target included building reuse, treating the large floorplates as landscapes with targeted interventions, and removing damaged elements rather than repairing them. New materials were limited to new interventions and enclosures, and 100,000 kg of material was salvaged and incorporated into the design. Superfluous new materials were avoided.
Reuse is this project’s cornerstone. Only a fraction of the materials used for Building 6 are new, with the vast majority preserved in place or salvaged on-site, repaired and reconfigured over time. Galleries—or museums within the museum—are tailored to the art they hold, allowing smaller systems throughout by containing and reducing those spaces that require tighter set points. Building 6 prioritizes specification of materials that are simple and elemental. Composite materials containing chemical compounds were avoided. Coatings were selected to reduce the introduction of VOCs and other chemicals. Many of the materials used at MASS MoCA come from MASS MoCA. Highlighting salvaged materials and the work of staff and local tradespeople builds on a local and on-site history of intervention in the buildings that the architect hopes will stretch far into the future.
Materials removed in this process were carefully stockpiled and reused—an architectural cut-and-fill operation that reduced waste and avoided the need for any virgin brick, stone, structural wood, or finish wood. Working with found material kept the project within regional material economies that have existed since the original construction and in alignment with the museum’s mission as a regional job creator that celebrates local craft. For example, the team worked carefully with masons to modify openings in the load-bearing masonry walls. Repaired and replaced factory windows were fabricated on-site in the museum’s window shop, which has been in operation since 1999.
MASS MoCA embodies the idea of a circular economy. As a factory, first of textiles and later electronics, the building has been used, modified, and reused countless times. Its transformation into a museum continues this legacy of building and material reuse, which extends to new material selections. The architect, design team, and client carefully considered future reuse on several time scales. The design maintains and advances low-tech, elemental solutions—bricks, wood beams, wood decking, solid wood floors, and simple partitions—that can be disassembled, modified, and reassembled by local tradespeople and, often, museum staff. Long life and change reinforce each other. MASS MoCA Building 6 relies heavily on materials salvaged and reused on-site (>100,000 kg) and materials left in place (>12,000,000 kg). These materials are in effect zero cost (excluding labor) but comprise the vast majority of materials utilized. All of the finish wood, structural wood, brick, and stone are salvaged.
RIDC Mill 19: Buildings A & B
2023 COTE® Top Winner | Architect: MSR Design with R3A Architecture | Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Link to full project page >
Mill 19 re-inhabits the last remnant of the former Pittsburgh Jones & Laughlin Steel Company. Built in 1953, the original structure operated as a steel rolling mill until the entire complex ceased production in 1997. Today, Mill 19 is the heart of Hazlewood Green, the city’s largest riverfront redevelopment project, located on its last remaining large-scale brownfield site. The design team took a unique approach to adaptive reuse by peeling away the existing mill’s deteriorated sheet metal skin, exposing its dramatic steel skeleton, and installing a sequence of speculative high-tech office, lab, and manufacturing structures within the existing structural frame.
Designing speculative commercial buildings within an existing steel shell mandated material and structural efficiency. The team balanced tenant expectations for floor-to-floor heights, structural bay clearances, and daylight and views within the existing armature’s fixed volumetric capacity for construction. The increased first-floor height was based on the maximum glazing height available to reduce waste from jumbo glass. The heights of levels two and three are set by the maximum metal panel height. Glazing width decisions were informed both by daylight analysis and alignment with the adjacent metal panel’s 30-inch module.
The innovative reuse of existing site materials grounds the project’s post-industrial identity, reduces its embodied carbon footprint, and minimizes demolition and construction waste. The existing monolithic structure’s individual bays are nuanced and unique, inspiring a customized approach for how the project and its users flow through it. The design team began the project by identifying opportunities within the extant steel exoskeleton to remove dangerous pieces and create sufficient openings for emergency access and windows. The design team carefully inventoried, labeled, and stockpiled salvaged steel so that they could be cleaned, cut, and reassembled as custom furniture elements, retaining walls for terraces, and railings.
The majority of the original steel and concrete elements that were selectively demoed to create paths in, around, and through the monolithic structure were cataloged, prepped, and reused in the site design. Mill 19 is a celebration of an idea embedded in circularity: Architecture should envision individual projects as temporary answers to temporary needs whose permanence come from their eventual use as material banks in a continuous cycle of reuse. The design’s identity is grounded in the dramatic exposing of a historic industrial structure.
Mill 19’s site context also influenced its approach to designing for future disassembly. The original mill’s construction consisted mainly of metal elements with exposed fasteners, including corrugated metal panels and a steel structure. The team maintained this tectonic in the design of the project’s new buildings and exterior platforms, bridges, and stairs. The project’s new wall sections have reasonable accommodations for disassembly, including simple, discrete, mechanically fastened layers. The use of carbon-intensive spray foam is minimized through an exterior wall assembly that utilizes continuous rigid mineral wool on the outside of the structural cavity. Metal panels with mechanically fastened attachments are used at all opaque wall assemblies.
Resources
AIA resources:
- AIA Design for Adaptability, Deconstruction, & Reuse guide
- AIA Guide to Building Reuse for Climate Action pdf
- AIA Renovate, Retrofit, Reuse guide