What: Deconstructing Demolition
Where: Tomkins Center for History and Culture - Ithaca, NY
When: May 11 to September 3, 2022
As a part of the partner network CR0WD (Circularity, Reuse and Zero Waste Development), Cornell's Circular Construction Lab and the Just Places Lab are co-curating the exhibition Deconstructing Demolition. The exhibition will be hosted in the atrium of the Tompkins Center for History and Culture located at 110 N. Tioga St. in downtown Ithaca, New York.
The exhibition combining physical building materials with augmented reality and interactive visuals is intended to introduce a general audience to the negative externalities of extant demolition practices and provide information on alternatives in the form of salvage, reuse and deconstruction. Alternatives to demolition are presented through the lenses of environmental sustainability, preservation of community value, employment opportunity, and a reimagining our relationship to the built environment.
The embodied carbon for this wood column is 38.25 kgCO2/kg. If this column is landfilled and left to rot, the sequestered carbon would have been released back into the atmosphere as CO2.
Ten houses were demolished and landfilled on College Avenue in Ithaca, NY. For every house, that is approximately 64 tons of carbon released into the atmosphere.