Advancing the building materials reclamation: An evaluation method for the disassembly potential of glass facade systems

The construction sector is responsible for producing and landfilling high volumes of construction and demolition waste. Design for disassembly (DfD) is deemed a promising strategy to establish a circular building process, enabling the easy separation of material and components at the end of life. Despite efforts to promote DfD, only a few applications of this strategy currently exists, and most buildings are not designed to be disassembled at the end of life. These non-DfD compliant building systems represent a possible source of materials and components, according to the concept of building as a materials bank. The ease of deconstruction of these systems should be evaluated to understand their harvesting capacity and circular potentiality. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the DfD level of the widely distributed facade systems in the high-rise building. Specifically, the unitized curtain wall, the stick facades, and the structural glass facades. In this research, a method to evaluate the DfD level of these facade systems has been developed, including various parameters grouped in three sets, such as the technological, economic and environmental ones. The application and validation of this method allowed to identify, among those investigated, the facade technology that is easier to disassemble. Further improvements to the evaluation method would involve fine-tuning the identified parameters to enhance accuracy.