Deconstruction Comes of Age by Kathleen O’Brien As available landfill space continues to shrink and the cost of disposing of construction debris heads skyward, increasing numbers of builders are looking to a process known as deconstruction for a partial answer to their waste-management needs. While there’s no single, universally recognized definition of the term, the California Integrated Waste Management Board defines deconstruction as “the reverse of construction ... a process to carefully dismantle or remove usable materials from structures, as an alternative to demolition. It maximizes the recovery of valuable building materials ... and minimizes ... waste.” In one sense, deconstruction is simply a new name for something that often happens informally anyway, as when a neighbor decides he’d like the
