Winners close the life-cycle loop

A sustainable mobile home, demountable tape for sheetrock and a reusable composite slab were all recent winners of the inaugural Lifecycle Building Challenge. The cutting-edge designs exemplified green building strategies that aim to significantly reduce water, energy and materials waste in the construction industry.

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, a professor at Mississippi State University School of Architecture; and the groHome, designed by members of Texas A&M University’s 2007 Solar Decathlon team.

Building renovation and demolition accounts for 91 percent of the construction and demolition debris generated in the United States, which results in more than 100 million tons of building-related construction and demolition debris annually.

Green Building Blocks, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Building Materials Reuse Association, the American Institute of Architects and West Coast Green launched the Lifecycle Building Challenge in January 2007. The winners were announced in September at West Coast Green.