Lifecycle Challenge winners announced

A sustainable mobile home, demountable tape for sheetrock and a reusable composite slab were all recently announced winners of the first Lifecycle Building Challenge, a design competition launched in January 2007 by Green Building Blocks, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Building Materials Reuse Association, the American Institute of Architects and West Coast Green.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson announced the winners of the competition at the West Coast Green conference in San Francisco. The cutting-edge designs exemplified green building strategies that aim to reduce water, energy and materials waste in the construction industry.

The categories included entire buildings, building components and green building services, methods or ideas. Winners of the building category included Seattle’s Pavilion in the Park designed by David Miller of Miller Hull Partnership; GreenMobile designed by Michael Berk, professor, Mississippi State University School ofArchitecture; and The groHome designed by members of Texas A&M University's 2007 Solar Decathlon team.

A full list of winners in all categories can be found at www.lifecyclebuilding.org.

Building renovation and demolition accounts for 91 percent of the construction and demolition debris generated annually in the United States.  The competition aimed to help the building industry reuse more of the 100 million tons of building-related construction and demolition debris sent each year to landfills in the United States.

Design professionals and students from around the United States submitted designs and ideas that incorporate cost-effective disassembly. Green Building Blocks, the competition sponsor, provided cash awards to student winners, and Green Building in Alameda County, Calif., provided the awards.