EPA Lifecycle Building Challenge

Announcing Lifecycle Building Challenge 3

Enter the third year of the Lifecycle Building Challenge competition , to shape the future of green building and facilitate local building materials reuse. Submit your innovative project, design, or idea for reducing to conserve construction and demolition materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by designing buildings for adaptability and disassembly.

Lifecycle building is designing buildings to facilitate disassembly and material reuse to minimize waste, energy consumption, and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Also known as design for disassembly and design for deconstruction, lifecycle building describes the idea of creating high-performance buildings today that are stocks of resources for the future.

U.S. EPA, partners kick off green building design challenge / Contest to reward designs that save resources, costs (Press Release) - December 15, 2008

2008 Winners

Lifecycle Building Challenge 2

Have you heard about Design for Deconstruction yet?

Imagine these possibilities:

a recreational building that breaks into 3 parts for transportation by truck to a new site;
the green mobile home with detachable rooms allowing for additions or remodeling;
a plug-in home with a specialized connector joint, allowing components to be unplugged quickly and without damage;
zip tape that allows drywall to be easily removed and reused

Building science fiction?! Not at all - these are just a few examples of ideas from last year's Lifecycle Building Challenge!

A National Competition - Call for Creative Ideas!

Important Dates

The competition is closed for this year, but Lifecycle Building Challenge will post this year's entries and winners soon.

The Lifecycle Building Challenge 2 is a Web-based competition from EPA, the Building Materials Reuse Association, the American Institute of Architects, Southface, and West Coast Green. This national competition invites engineers, designers, planners, contractors, builders, educators and students to submit their ideas for buildings and building materials that facilitate and anticipate future changes to and eventual adaptation, disassembly, or dismantling for recovery.

Also known as design for disassembly and design for deconstruction, lifecycle thinking encompasses the idea of creating buildings that are stocks of resources for future buildings. By creating building components that can be easily recovered and reused, materials are kept at their highest value, which reduces energy and resource consumption.

Press Release - April 9, 2008

Award Categories

Building - an existing whole building or design
Innovation - a connector, tool, policy, or education

Professionals can submit both built and unbuilt ideas, and students can submit unbuilt ideas.

NEW in 2008! - Outstanding Achievement Awards

This year, our partners will also recognize outstanding ideas in the following categories:

Greenhouse Gas Reduction - sponsored by the Building Material Reuse Association
Residential - sponsored by West Coast Green
School - sponsored by the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS)

If you have any questions, please e-mail The Life Cycle Building Challenge (info@lifecyclebuilding.org).

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US EPA Administrator Announces Green Building Design Competition Winners

The Lifecycle Building Challenge, a national competition to promote building material reuse though disassembly and adaptability, has collected innovative designs ideas from across the nation. During a ceremony on September 20, 2007, at the West Coast Green Conference in San Francisco, EPA Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response Assistant Administrator Susan Bodine announced winners of the inaugural Lifecycle Building Challenge competition.

EPA Assistant Administrator Bodine, along with the American Institute of Architects President RK Stewart, and Building Materials Reuse Association President Brad Guy, recognized award winners for their cutting-edge green building ideas that aim to reduce environmental and energy impacts of buildings.

Ideas from the design contest will jumpstart the building industry to help reuse more of the 100 million tons of building-related construction and demolition debris sent each year to landfills in the United States.

Press Release - September 20, 2007

View a gallery of all the entries where you'll see:

houses that grow with families
solar cell walls that move
pizza box inspired framing
entire buildings designed to snap apart like Legos
shape-shifting multi-family housing/commercial spaces
disaster shelters designed to be built out by community members

The Lifecycle Building Challenge was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the American Institute of Architects, the Building Materials Reuse Association, and West Coast Green. This national competition, sponsored by GreenBuildingBlocks.com, collected building and building component ideas that encourage the reuse of building materials by making them easy to disassemble and recover. Lifecycle building creates stocks of resources for future buildings, and the designs from the competition will keep materials at their highest value to minimize energy and resource consumption.