Palo Alto Residence
Typically a house would be demolished and the waste shipped to a landfill. In this case, the house was deconstructed piece by piece over the course of a five-week period. Most of the materials that were not objects, such as plumbing and electrical fixtures, were broken down and shipped to nearby recycling centers. The balance of the materials were either broken down and reused in some other form, i.e. gypsum and plaster were reused as road base or filler in other construction. A company called the Re-use People took other materials, i.e., clay roof tiles, windows and light switches for resale.
While deconstructing the existing pool, the subsurface soil was found to be a good match as base material for the rammed earth walls of the new house. About 50% of the material in the new rammed earth walls is comprised of soil from the site.
Photographer: Joe Fletcher
Colour of rammed earth