Sustainable Deconstruction
What would it look like to build in a way that leaves no waste behind? The Raw Earth Sgraffito Pavilion was created to give answers that question. Inaugurated in May 2023 at Reid Hall, the project was led by Columbia Professors Lola Ben-Alon and Lynnette Widder, with Greg Yetman of Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. Built from of blocks made from soil excavated locally for the extension of the Paris RER rapid train and plastered in bi-color layers of clay from the Ile-de-France region, the installation offered shelter, shade, and seating for conversation and study for a full year until its removal in July 2024, as mandated by the landmark preservation status of Reid Hall.
The process of deconstruction was envisaged as low in impact and as local as was its construction. Working with Edifice Formation, an organization specialized in teaching ecological building techniques, the pavilion was carefully dismantled. Trainees learned how to chisel off plaster, preserving some of the sgrafitto surface that detailed the routes taken by the materials used for the structure’s realization. Many of the earth blocks were retained and transported to the organization’s site in Versailles for use in future training sessions. Blocks that were fragmented and the pure clay plaster that could not be salvaged were bagged for use in a new raw earth foundation. These will be re-dissolved in water to make a slurry that can serve as the basis for another structure. Even the plywood, beautifully configured by the woodworkers Patagonia into curved panels that sheltered the top of the walls and embedded as a seating surface into pockets in the block, found a new life. Artist Badara Ndiaye has already transformed the tapering panels using acrylic overpainting and will display the works later this fall.
According to a 2022 study, some 70% of all solid waste in France comes from the construction sector, and almost half of that comes from demolition. That translates into 3.4 tons each year for each of the nation’s inhabitants. The cumulative materials used in the Raw Earth Sgrafitto pavilion was around 6.2 metric tons, nearly a year’s allowance for two Parisians. The high percentage in the Paris waste stream of construction debris also reflects the intractability of the problem it poses when compared to post-consumer materials that may have value as recyclables – glass, metals, some plastics – or can become feedstock in new production chains, such as organics that can serve as compost. A circular economy approach, in which all construction is conceived to permit both recovery of the materials used and a market for those materials, is considered the best possible option for this sector. In the case of the Raw Earth Sgrafitto Pavilion, collaboration with Edifice Formation to provide both the artisanal skills and the after-market applications for recovering the earthen block, demonstrates how circular economy for low-carbon building products can work.
Local earth is, in Paris and in any major city, a limited resource. Excavated from deep soil strata unaffected by atmospheric change, climate shifts, pollution and plant migrations, it is a window into the deep history of a place. As Agnès Bastin explained during an evening roundtable on the Raw Earth Sgrafitto Pavilion held at Reid Hall in November 2023, the quarries available for clean soil in the Paris region are decreasing in viability as the number of dumping sites for mixed excavation have to proliferate. As a contribution to thinking soil as resource, the pavilion and its deconstruction result in an important model for potentials for a sustainable future.
Collaborators
Deconstruction: Edifice Formation, led by Silvia Devescovi and Lucie Allart
Artist, recovered plywood: Badara Ndiaye
Deconstruction Logistics: Lynnette Widder
On-site coordination: Krista Fauri
Design: Lola Ben Alon and Lynnette Widder, assisted by Zina Berrada
GIS/Route mapping for Sgrafitto: Greg Yetman, Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University
