Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture, Part 22: What's The Point? Building with Circularity in Mind

Episode Topic: What's The Point? Building with Circularity in Mind

Katie Fitzhugh, director of destruction at Repurpose Savannah, explains the importance of her work with the women-led advocacy group that is establishing a sustainable future through deconstructing, salvaging, and reusing historic buildings. 

Featured Speakers:

• Katie Fitzhugh, Director of Destruction, Repurpose Savannah

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/87ec58.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture. 

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Transcript

Welcome & Introducing Guest Lecturer Katie Fitzhugh

1 0:19

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the first lecture of the 20 25 26 Academic year, uh, and we are joined today by Katie Fitzhugh from Repurpose Savannah, who is our due to lecturer series event, for the fall semester. Katie has originally from Montana, has two bachelor's degrees, one in anthropology and the other in Colonial American history. she also has a master's in architectural history from the Savannah College of Art Design. Besides her role in repurpose Savannah as director of Deconstruction at Repurpose Savannah. She is also an adjunct instructor at Savannah Technical College where she teaches carpentry and roofing, for the Stark Preservation Program there. she's gonna talk a whole lot more about herself and you did not come here to hear me talk, so I am going to turn over, the mic to Katie. So please welcome her.

Speaker 2 1:23

Hi.

Speaker 3 1:23

Every, well I turned it on. Can you all, oh, there it's, hi everybody. How are you? Happy five o'clock and you're still here. Thank you for being here. Alright. First and foremost, obviously, thank you so much to the School of Architecture for hosting me. I am thrilled to come visit Notre Dame and see what all great things Indiana has to offer. And thank you Dr. Hartley for hosting me and, uh, keeping me on schedule maybe. But I'm here. I'm here now. So, like they said, my name is Katie. I did grow up in Montana and Washington State. I do like to make sure you all know that because that's where my heart is. also my experience out there, restoring historic structures is what got me where I am today. That's where I learned all of my hands on education. I restored historic homes with both of my parents and my dad made sure that I could use every tool just as well as he could. I lost my remote. Okay. Brock,

Speaker 2 2:24

every time.

Speaker 3 2:25

Okay. Sorry. Will it work?

Speaker 2 2:31

Oh, it was,

Deconstruction in Action: “Unearthing” Hidden Historic Features (Porches & Signs)

Speaker 3 2:37

I went to art school. Okay. So I am the director of Deconstruction at Repurpose Savannah, and I don't know how many of you are familiar with Repurpose Savannah, but we are a 5 0 1 3 nonprofit, so. We're an all female plus crew. You don't see that very often. It's fantastic. I have eight people on my staff and we all work very well together. a little bit about repurpose. Our mission, we like to say, is a three leaf clover. We advocate for training women in non-traditional vocations. we also make sure that everybody knows that deconstruction is a sustainable alternative to traditional demolition. in 2023 repurposed Savannah did keep 475 tons of historic materials out of our landfills, which is a feat, let me tell you. It comes out of all of our bodies. deconstruction is absolutely a form of historic preservation, and that is a soapbox that I will never get off. So one of the things that I like is that it brings us back to what was deconstruction does offer a surgical aspect to it so we can remove different additions and subsequently, unearth what people have previously covered. So I have a few examples just because I can tell you what deconstruction is, but I think it's easier to visualize it if you can literally see what we do. So this is a porch in southern Alabama. It had been encased and was then a sitting room as we deconstructed it. We did find all of these beautifully turned columns. This is a photo. this is a sign in Savannah, Georgia. They had covered it up twice, I think some of you in the audience got to see the larger structure in one of our courses today. I'm pretty sure Gina did. Wherever you are. All right. But one of the things that I really like is, like I said, unearthing, what was the city of Savannah was actually so thrilled that we had rediscovered these signs and they're going to produce them as postcards for visitors to our beautiful hostess city. But now I guess we should get to it. So what is the point? Building with circularity in mind? First, I all really hope you all appreciated this pun because circles don't have points and I thought that was clever. Right? Thanks for your laughs. Alright. How old do you all think traditional demolition is as an industry? Throw me a number, Seth. How, how old do you think it is? How long has traditional demolition with a bulldozer been around? Demolition, as we know now, is only really gained popularity after World War ii. And that's because we started to see modern warfare create new problems that we previously didn't see before. So we have cities that have been decimated and flattened, and unfortunately we needed the ability to move these materials out of the way so that the people in these communities could get back to a new normal or redevelop their loc, their cities and bring back their structures. So bulldozers, caterpillar started producing bulldozers. general Eisenhower himself, promoted bulldozers and said that without them, it would, the Americans wouldn't have been so as successful as they were in the European Theater. I mentioned this because traditional demolition is a wild ride and it's, it's only about 80 years old. Right before that, people were deconstructing and reusing their material. So I do have a video for all of you, and it was produced by the city of San Antonio, the Office of Historical Preservation, who passed a deconstruction ordinance in 2022. And this ordinance mandated that his historic structures that were 1945 and older could not be demolished. You had to deconstruct it. However, the way that they went about this was brilliant. You know, supply and demand, we've all heard that. Well, they were going to demand that these structures were deconstructed. However, who was gonna do it? You have to make sure that you're going to supply the people with the pe. Well, with the companies and the trained contractors who could deconstruct the structures that they were now mandating be deconstructed. So when they did, they produced this video and it's two minutes and 30 seconds about deconstruction and what it can do for your local community. I thought you would all like to see it and I hope I'm not off base, so we're gonna watch it.

Speaker 4 7:27

This is the story of two homes. They both provide their shelter main, so think the lives these homes are over the first house. It's lumber, windows, doors, brick. All of it is buried in a landfill and will dec over hundreds of years. This is a waste of more than 41 that was used to the materials that went into the house. That's a equivalent to driving your Carly. 93,000 mines are almost four times around the world. In greenhouse gas emissions, construction, and demolition waste is the largest source of waste landfill nationally, more than total. The household out wasting building materials, demolition needs to. It destroys ecosystems and decreases our created over tons of waste that's equivalent to over, but it doesn't have to be this. Remember, the house, it's on the path or deconstruction, meaning its materials will be taken apart and re like an organ donor. This home parts will give new height to other buildings. Its bricks and were used as alternatives to repair a home. Its windows for installed in a bakery. Its beautiful. B Wood is now flooring in a tri new restaurant and with a fresh coat of paint. Its front door is now the top of a family's dining room table it's at and offite generate about 300 jobs for every 10,000 tons of material. On average, deconstructing employees six times more people than demolition. Deconstruction produces jobs in manufacturing, retail, and building trades, creating a cycle of reuse for building materials. We can't protect the future of our older homes and buildings like using materials from their past. This nurtures a h environment continues the legacy of our city's built heritage and keeps quality materials out. Our landfills. San Antonio can leave away where cities across the world and it starts with our buildings today to demolish, deconstruct, and or use. It's the earth-friendly alternative.

Deconstruction Isn’t New: Historic Reuse Examples from Europe

The Waste Problem: C&D Waste Scale and the “Fill the Stadium” Math

Making Salvage Usable: Processing, Selling, and Keeping Material Histories

Bricks at Scale: Deconstructing Masonry and Saving 75,000 Bricks

Reuse Culture Spotlight: Copenhagen Brick Facades and Why Stories Matter

What’s Next: Mass Timber, Reclaimed Wood Supply, and New Material Research at Notre Dame

Call to Action: Design With Intent, Use Local Salvage, Push for Policy Change

Q&A: What Reclaimed Materials Really Cost (Labor, Pricing, Accessibility)

Speaker 3 10:10

I hope you all enjoyed it. thanks. Appreciate it. Alright, that's it. Have a great night. Okay, so I just. Deconstruction is not new in any means. We know that because I'm fairly certain. Most of you spend a lot of time in Europe and we see lots of evidence of historical reuse for, I brought examples, this is one of my favorite examples. This was on one of my archeological digs. Just next door to this. this is located in southern France and Lacoste and SCAD has a campus there. And I don't know if you all can see, but do you see anything that doesn't match the others? That doesn't look like a square stone? This was from an earlier, Roman temple, and it's actually a drum of a column. When you're looking at it straight on, you can see that it is fluided and we do have historical records of the temple that was deconstructed and then subsequently reused in this building. This is one of my favorite examples of reuse and structurally it stresses me out. All right. So these are absolutely raptors that had been repurposed for studs and they are in a gable of a three story structure. but it's a great example. You can see the bird's mouth. That's a telltale sign of reuse and the paint, right? So, a little bit about, one thing that we do every repurpose Savannah is we do make sure that everything is heavily documented. We 3D scan every structure before we deconstruct it. So people like you, all students, professors alike, can go in and you can analyze the historic structure that's no longer a piece of our fabric, right? Even though digitally we're able to still interact with these structures, which is crucial part of research and documentation, we do unfortunately lose the ability to physically interact with the structure because it's no longer there. But we can do our best and make sure that everyone still has access to the information. All right, which leads. Model. I know in that video we, it briefly went over it, but I brought this because most of you are architects correct? Or at least studying to be architects. Do we have any interior design? Yes. Lacey. what other historic pre Gina? I know that you're a concentration Maya. Oh, some I didn't see earlier today, so I don't know your names. Alright, so you'll like this. This is you. So once we've harvested the raw materials, one of the aspects that you often do is sustainably designed, sorry. And with that comes oh my bad. Production distribution com. consumption collection and waste management deconstruction is absolutely a massive part of this because. We don't have to harvest raw materials. Everything is already in this loop when we are REU or when we are utilizing materials that we already have harvested or extracted from our earth. And I really wanna make sure our students know that you guys are one of the driving forces behind sustainability, but also almost mandating what materials people are using in your designs. When you design, are you making room for historic materials that don't match all of the Home Depot dimensions? Right. I don't know if it's, if you're doing that, it's hard to do. Once our building materials were standardized, we don't have to make exceptions for historic doors that are maybe 34 and three quarters of an inch wide. It makes it a little bit more difficult. I'm absolutely confident that all of you can take on this challenge and make sure that we're putting more reclaimed materials back into our everyday life. It might not be clean, it might not be easy, but that's not fun, right? You guys can do it. There's a challenge. Most of what we see, especially for instance, if you're going to Home Depot, because a lot of these materials that you owe that are going to build the structures, it's a brilliant structures that you put time and effort, and I've seen your beautiful drawings and I would love to see every single one of them produced so I can walk in them. they're going to be standard, standardized. However, the standardization of our materials is very linear. It's a take, make, dispose model. That's not very cool. Our trees don't like that, so aim for this guy. All right. I know this is a really Debbie Downer subject of waste, but how many of you walk by demolition projects and think, I wonder how much that dumpster weighs? Have any of you ever thought of that? No. Maybe a few of you. Maybe those of you who I've talked to today and yesterday and asked you to do that. Alright, so C and D waste is one third of the entire world's waste population. That's not, so that's a lot. In 2023, the World Economic Forum estimated that by the end of the year of 2025, which we're all in, we would produce over 2.2 billion tons of waste with only two industries, construction and demolition. And we just talked that like demolition, the way we know it now is 80 years old. My grandma is 80 years old, okay? And the span of like the world that's not very long, but already that industry is producing well is attributing to one third of our world's waste. Okay? I will say that when I read 2.2 billion tons, I had no idea what that would look like, do you? I don't. And I know what a 30 yard dumpster looks like. That's four tons. So I know that that's 8,000 pounds. For those of you who may not know a ton is 2000 pounds. So I made it something you would all understand. So I did some math, and I'm not saying I'm bad at math, but I mathed and I know I told some of you this statistic today, so I found some dimensions from the 1930s. I used them, I found the volume of a cylinder because that was as close as I thought I could get. and if you're better at math than me, email me the correct answer. So I found the cubic metric number and rather than reading them all to you, I'll just do this. Wait, Brock, you told me that people couldn't see that. Oh, well. So I multiplied, I found, like I said, found the volume of the football stadium with a circumference of 800 meters by 14 meters high. And then I had to convert it to the Imperial system, right? The metric system was too easy, we had to make it harder. And I was like, dang it. Alright. So this was a weird number. I had to do some research to find what a cubic yard of c and d material weighed. Just one cubic yard. So I got 417 and I multiplied it by the volume. And we got this 3,844,000,001 or 1,903 to uh, 217 pounds. I took that number and I did multi, I did divide it by thousand, which is a ton. That's what we're trying to get, and I discovered that we could just, in case you all wondered, on Saturday when you watch Notre Dame win, you could fill that stadium, 1,145 tons with waste produced by two industries. Remember that when you're designing your structures, that's a big number. Have you seen your stadium? It's insane. It's huge. I went to the University of Montana. I think it held like seven cows, 1,145. Let's talk about how maybe we could reduce that. So let's look at building materials. And I know I've been talking about building materials and how we can use them and what they are. And I did bring some, some examples which I'm gonna pass around. And I think most of you can get from A to B fairly well, but the camera can't pick these up. I brought you a modern nominal four by four from wood that we are currently harvesting in sev, well in Georgia. So this is what's called a lob lolly pine. It has been, altered to grow quickly. This is an antique cart pine piece out of what's called long leaf. You'll definitely be able to tell the difference and let know if you can count the rings in this. You can it. Thank you. The smaller one came with the standardization. So that's nominal. Nominal means it's only a four by four in name, not in true measurement. The true is the much larger one that's actually four inches. Alright, I'm sure we all see fire buildings and think immediately we need to tear it down. However, I just wanted to show you all some examples of historic materials that we have salvaged and that have been absolutely reused and put back into our communities. This structure did obviously have a fire in it. However, we were able to deconstruct it and the structural engineer said this material was absolutely still usable, but maybe in a more decorative way than structural. But I like it because you can see how the flames lapped it and the community on Tybee Island, Georgia, which is where we were in this, on this project, the fire station incorporated this where they wanted to something. Alright, but one of the things with deconstruction and salvage material is how do I take piles like this and make it usable? Right? If you're, say you're, um, a contractor or you're in construction management and you have to take this pile and someone tells you to use it, but you have the option to go to Home Depot, how am I gonna beat you out? Home Depot, they're all ready to be immediately reused this pile. There are nails, nothing is the same. It doesn't have clean ends. You can't see the, the end grain. You don't know what you're getting into. So at Repurpose and in salvage as a whole, we spend a lot of time making things sellable, and unfortunately, it does come down to what you can sell and what you cannot. Because if I can't get you to buy it and reuse it now I just have a really nicely organized landfill and I'm paying a lot of money in rent to host it, right? If it doesn't move and it's not being reused new landfill and I don't want that, then I'm just moving piles to move piles. But I dunno if you can see, this is gonna be a siding, a Dutch lot siding. And this is, these are two by sixes or two by eight, excuse me. And I want you to know, I think you can all see it, is that really tiny, there are codes and the codes that repurpose Savannah refer to the hi to the structure that they came out. So not only are we making sure that we're documenting the structures, we're keeping the provenance with all of the materials. So if you buy a two by six and put it in your home, you can come to me and be like, Hey Katie, I really love the history of, I can't see ch, so I know internally that that's the Cress Hill bungalow and I can provide that history with you immediately in the receipt. So the story travels with all of the materials. Do you know where your lumber came from in Home Depot? Sometimes it doesn't matter, right? I mean, if we're talking about a utility purpose, you don't really need to know where your material comes from. If we're making sure that we're paying homage to our communities and the people who put that time and effort into creating these goods, it's really nice to know and it just promotes that deconstruction is historic preservation. Okay. Alright. I just included this because I thought it was neat. my crew at Repurpose did learn recently how to frame and how to utilize the materials that we are always, you know, promoting. So, we deconstructed this last week. We came home and we cleaned up the material, measured it, pulled all the nails, and immediately put it back into reuse. So this will be our decon shed to store all of our tools so we can continue taking care of our community. So. I know that we're talking about wood mostly. However, I never wanna discredit masonry, especially the amount of work that went into all of the bricks that you see here. We recently deconstructed a 19,000 square foot structure. it was three buildings that had just been kind of married together over the past 150 years, and everyone was like, you absolutely cannot deconstruct a mason restructure. Nobody is going to reuse those bricks, which is interesting because bricks have one of the most lateral reuse function. It's a brick. It was a brick. It's gonna go be a brick. Weird, right? A historic two by eight might be. This was a much larger piece, but a historic two by eight, right? You can't use historic material sometimes that has been previously pierced as structural beams or structural anything, right? So this is gonna take a little bit more of a value add and more effort to create. Maybe you'll take this and you'll mill it into a historic floor for a patch or something like that, but bricks being so immediately reusable are incredibly important. The city of Savannah really didn't want us to deconstruct this, and in the long run, because we were able to save five semi worth, we filled five of these and there are about 30 pallets on each semi, and each pallet held 480 bricks. I just want you to know that that means we cleaned every brick and so, you know, roughly multiplying that it came out to be about 75,000 bricks, and that's just one type. I'm not even telling you about the other bricks that like went to live somewhere else. So. These bricks were all purchased by one buyer and they are going down to Brunswick, Georgia to be built or to, yeah, to, he's building himself, a self-supporting Mason restructure out of all of these bricks. And I love this challenge for him. But if I don't touch another brick for at least like maybe one week just until my hands recover, it's okay with me. Alright. I So that the, each one of these bricks is saved individually, correct. 70,000 individual bricks that we've all touched maybe seven times. And then loaded on this, I did wanna just highlight this photo that I took myself took, and that's why Hannah's head is in it. I'm standing by this image in Copenhagen. I really liked this because this is something that I am passionate about. And what they did was they came the demolition contractor because in Europe they don't have to specify demolition and deconstruction. Demolition by default is deconstruction. But they cut out meter by meter sections of his, of other structures that were being demolished, and then they upcycled it and superimposed it on this structure. This is in the stead district, and there are, there's an architecture, the design firm out there, and they're producing more of these similar structures, making sure that bricks are being constantly reused as much as they can. And one thing that I thought was really interesting that I'd like to share with you, um, because people make the story is on the other side where you can't see just behind this, behind this building is kind of a more drab structure. And the family, one of the families came out as 12, like 12 of us are standing outside just gawing over this beautiful structure. And they told us that they were dying to move into it so that they could be excited to come home to a pretty building, to a building that had a story to materials that used to have a life. I thought that was really interesting because nobody coaxed them. They didn't know that we were there on a sustainability delegation, and we were absolutely looking to see how they were reusing their materials. They just came out and offered that story to us. So I liked how embedded reuse and the excitement of reuse was within the Danish culture. All right. So let's talk about maybe some building technique that if we changed a little bit, we could advocate for more reused materials in our buildings. So do you all think currently most people are designing for replacement or repair charity? Correct. Alright. Can you, I'm sure all of you have really beautiful vinyl windows. What happens if someone breaks it? Do you repair it or do you have to take out the interior trunk? And the exterior trim and to cut out the, cut out the window and put a whole new window in. Or can you just replace the paint? You have to take it out. I know, I know you all knew where that was going, but I just had to tell you where it was going. Alright, so what if, what if our architects, what if our designers, what if our material manufacturers went back to designing for replacement? I have this photo and I know you can see that the sill beam is incredibly rotted out and maybe you might not replace this one. you know, I didn't own the building so it did come fully down and deconstructed. However, all of these materials were reused on the property. Alright. I just wanted to show you that while our sill beam here isn't, is entirely rotted out. And I just want you to know, it felt really crunchy. Like it was gross and it was soaking wet and it had been covered up for like, I mean, this building was 1830. It was the original kitchen. so it was set off of the original family home. But you can see that the meat of these hand hued studs is still in great shape, right? You could easily, I say you could easily, there's a lot of work that would go into this, but you could replace this and put these studs back in and this building would be structurally fine for another a hundred and x amount of years. I wanted to show you guys, show you all this. This structure is a case study in Savannah. This is one of my very first projects that I was a part of. We call it the workers cottage. This area in Savannah is historically where the railroad workers would have. Spent most of their time and where all of their cute, we call them worker or railroad houses. These were, so this is on Anderson and East Broad, I dunno if you all know this, but, uh, Dr. Hartley used to live in Savannah and uh, that's how I know him. He used to sit on the board of, our parent company called Emergent Structures. Alright, back in. So the owner really wanted to save this portion of the structure, and you can see that over time there were two different additions. They were starting to fail. And in Savannah we have an organization called the Historic Savannah Foundation, which purchases structures that are kind of teetering on being required to be demolished, or in this case deconstructed. So what we did is all we want, our main goal was just to remove these two additions and leave this guy so that it could continue on its life. So. I just wanna show you what we did. So we took it back, essentially cleaned up the lines, removed the cancerous portion of the structure, and so that the contractors could come in and they're putting in a new addition. But you can see that while we left this wall, and you can see that this s beam is really taking a toll right here. Subsequently, they decided to just remove the, the majority of that addition. But I like this because remember the siding from the first photo. Okay. Remember it, it's coming back. Oh, right there. So when we removed the siding, uh, we took it off, we cleaned it up, and the owner wanted it to go back on. While some of the siding was not able to be kept, we had to marry it with some other projects, which luckily deconstruction offers the ability to find like materials and utilize them in restoration projects or rehabilitation project. Historic tax credit projects. we did that on this project. This is what the house looks like today. And the siding went back on these additions. So I like that it was kind of start to finish. It was put on as an addition. We had to remove it, but we cleaned it up and then it immediately got to go back into well onto the house. So I like these because deconstruction is not always structural, like a full structural removal. It does offer the surgical aspect that, you know, maybe a backhoe wouldn't. I'm not that good at driving a backhoe, so maybe it can, but don't let me drive it. Alright. I did want you all to see that there is an uptick in using lumber. And so if we highlight mass timber, which is an interesting concept in and of itself. we can see that people are making a more conscious effort to design with lumber. And I mentioned mass timber, and I know sometimes that can be a hot talk, like a hot button topic, but one thing I've been seeing is mass timber, uh, material producers contacting salvage companies because they want to utilize the materials that have been previously extracted from our natural resource. For instance, let's just pretend that somebody called, repurposed the van and they said, Hey, we wanna start producing LVLs, for mass timber structures, but we wanna use your wood sold. Like, let's use the materials that we already have access to that our forebearers have already put time, effort, money, resources into. Why would we reinvent the wheel if somebody has already done it for us? We don't have to. So. And I don't pretend to be a specialist in mass timber architecture, so don't ever tell someone I said I was, but oh, I don't even have it. I did wanna highlight something really cool that I've discovered at Notre Dame and Professor Carrie over in ID or industrial design is trying to create, what is it an alternative to traditional MDF and he's using hay in a soybean glue. And I was, I was amazed. I thought it was the neatest thing because MDF, I mean is SDU and glue, and if it gets wet, guess what? I can't salvage MDF if you shoot too many nails through it and I have to pry, guess what? I can't salvage MDF. So if there is a different form that may with a little bit more sturdy, which we'll find out because I know you'll two are working together for the durability aspect of this new. Man made hay, MDF, let's call it HDF, I dunno what he's gonna call it, but I like that Notre Dame is so advanced that you all are already doing the research for alternative building materials. You guys are too cool for me. I'm thoroughly impressed. But also in building techniques, it's not really a technique, but it's really important to, what we do is training more people who can deconstruct and who can provide the community with reusable material. Now, I have to say, as a massive caveat, I am not promoting the erasing of historic structures or any structure, and I say historic structure because that's our specialty at Repurpose. So that just is a natural word that I throw in. We need to be salvaging. The structures that people are trying to demolish. Now, don't go out here and just tell me we need to deconstruct and salvage every building that you walk by. That's not the point. However, if a building is going to be destroyed and demolished, why would we not make the effort to salvage the materials about? And I don't mean go in and poach out the most lucrative pieces because that's too easy and that's too slimy. That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to bring honor and respect to these historic structures before we throw them in the landfill, because we don't wanna them in the landfill. So we're going to take them out and salvage them and put them back into our communities and make sure that your neighbor can fix maybe, or ailing porch so that she doesn't have a code enforcement infraction, right? Or maybe you have a beautiful Queen Ann Victorian and someone, you know, your dang kid left the bathtub running and it just spilled over and it ruined all of your hard pine floors. Where, where are you gonna find a repair? Home Depot. Okay, let me know how that goes for you. But if you know where to locate your local salvage companies and people who maybe have materials that will match your 1950 Craftsman Bungalow, that's a great resource. So we're not poaching, we are resources for our local communities. So I highlighted this back to San Antonio. We at Repurpose Savannah go out every year and we train decon or demolition and construction contractors in deconstruction. This was my cohort last year. They were all from different backgrounds, however, they were still there for the same purpose, and that was to learn how to salvage the buildings. San Antonio was losing roughly 600 structures a year before this deconstruction ordinance. I'm not exactly sure what the diversion rate is at this point. I will be back in two weeks. So maybe I'll ask them that. Alright. This is what you all can do. This is your call to action that every presentation has, right? I want you all to make sure that you're designing with intent. I'm sure it doesn't really matter. You as architect, if you know where your materials are coming from, feel free to ask. Maybe we aren't. Maybe more people need to be asking that, right? So I'm sure you can all read these, but I just learned that why don't you guys have a local resource and it's South Bend Trade Works. Who's been there? Okay, so like take a poll, carpool, go check it out. I'm trying to get over there tomorrow, by the way, I'm trying to go over there tomorrow. How said he take me? Thanks Al. All right. And then one thing that I think we overlook quite often is the chance to change legislation. Do you have a deconstruction ordinance? No. But can you Yes. we and Savannah are working towards one right now, which is interesting because Savannah, Georgia does not have a deconstruction ordinance, but it's renowned for its effort into historic preservation. But we're really happy to throw our historic materials in the landfill. Interesting. But if things don't change overnight and they can't change with just one person, so get involved. That's the main thing you can do, is you can get involved, you can meet your local council members, you can meet people who are interested in sustainability. I mean, I think, I'm pretty sure you all have a sustainability program or at least a, a concentration. Correct. All right. Great. That's a great start right there. Let's talk to those students. Let's see what people are doing. Let's see, what is all in your brains that we can extract and show to our local, legislature, legislators. Here we go. But I don't, every, every city is different in some cities, you know, unfortunately, historic preservation is not at the forefront of their mentality and not at the forefront of their urban fabric. However, I'm pretty sure it sounds like, from what I've seen and what I've heard, south Bend has a pretty robust effort and historic preservation. It, that's, that was a very subjective statement. Evidently, based on the looks on all of your faces, change it. Let's put more of an effort in historic preservation and bringing back our vital downtowns. Urban sprawl is cool. I mean, that's where, hobby Lobby is, and that's where we can all buy our yarn. But why, why can't it be a yarn store? In a historic bank downtown, right? There are so many options. We just need to explore them. We need to put time and energy into it, and we really need to make sure that we are working together. Right? That's what I like. Community, it's important, drives what we do.

Speaker 5 41:09

I have a question about cost. Like overall, is there a cost difference between using partial sru, partial repurposed materials? entirely none. and if so, how does that work? Because it's also if you're using the same materials on the same house, it might be lower cost, but have you also observed that people care about the cost or are there certain people that, that's not important to, so what's that whole world's like?

Speaker 3 41:37

Yeah, absolutely. So cost is a huge driver of people using and not using historic material, right? So. Oh, such a loaded question and I love it. you can easily go to Home Depot, correct? And they have QR codes. Every single two by four is gonna be the exact same two by four, right? So one thing dimensionally, I mean like if you're gonna buy a two by four, it's going to be a two by four by eight, or a two by four by 16, or a two by four, by 12. And every single thing is going to be like that in the rec, like in the reclamation world, not every single stick is going to be the same dimension. So when we process it, and I say we, I'm talking about like my experience and what my crew does, I cannot speak on a national level, but I can tell you that we try and save everything that we can. So every piece is individually cold out. So with that, we have to figure out how to price that so that it's attainable or not attainable. So it relates to every single piece of material in that bundle. So really fast. We're gonna, we're gonna do some clicking.

Speaker 4 42:47

Sorry.

Speaker 3 42:51

Okay. You can see that every single piece right here is flat and it's all justified, but the other side is like this. They're all different sizes. That was a weird noise. cost. I always say sometimes, well, I say this, reclaim materials can be more costly because the immediate labor to product, well, to deconstruct them. So not only is there labor to extract them from the historic structure, I then have to drive them to repurpose Savannah or my lumber yard, wherever they're going. And then I have to process them. So I have labor on two sides, right? I have labor in the decon and I have labor on the, on the processing side. So how do I cover that in all of those? This, our retail portion kind of subsidizes that. A lot of people, price is important and we don't wanna price out our materials. Why? Because everybody should have access to our community materials, right? If Joe, uh, if, if Dr. Hartley over here lives in a three point$800 mansion, and then I'm over here living as like a legacy resident and my house is in disrepair and I don't have, you know, I'm strapped for cash, but I need his, I need building materials and I can't afford Home Depot, but this is in my backyard. I wanna make sure that I'm not having a price point that doesn't make it accessible to everybody. There's been a, there's a, his, well, in the past, historic materials and preservation has maybe been thought of as an elite option, right? Because they were more expensive. So people aren't catering to the entire community. They're catering to one audience. That's not fair to your community. So we do, I'm not answering your question because I don't have like a really solid, like Dr. Hartley can buy this, but Katie can't, you know, I don't have that. We really try to meet people in the middle, but there are times where this material, because you want certain value ads are going to be more expensive because now we have shop time, now we have to mill it down because you want a floor and these are all two by eight. So not only am I selling you the two by eight, but now I also have to sell you the labor. So I would love, if you wanna come volunteer your time at Repurpose Savannah and help me develop like a standardized sales system. But there isn't one that is really useful. Like it, there's not one that's tailored to reclaim materials. We're kind of forcing it into like, say Squarespace. So.

Speaker 6 45:34

Hey, Katie, I wanna ask you a similar question.

Speaker 3 45:36

Oh, great.

Speaker 6 45:37

Yeah,

Speaker 3 45:38

because I did so good on the last one.

Speaker 6 45:40

so how does deconstruction compare financially to, uh, demolition? Because I, I imagine from what you just said, that deconstructing is more expensive than, the knowledge chain, but then you make money outta the materials. So how, how is this working for you guys?

Speaker 3 45:58

Yeah, and that's just our business model. I will say that, we have a really small crew, but in the video, but also what we always say is deconstruction is six times more expensive. And that's not a real number. We just say that because I have six humans that I have to pay, and like demolition has one operator and a machine. And if you outright own that machine, then your overhead is significantly lower. My overhead is incredibly high because I have six people. I have vehicles, I have to move the materials and you know, I have subcontractors and things like that, so it can be more expensive. One aspect that Repurpose has gone through and done is because we're a nonprofit, this acts as a material donation. So our clients are able to claim a tax deduction on the other side. So sometimes it comes out in the wash, sometimes they come out ahead and sometimes we lose in the delta. I always say my estimates are truly estimates and I will work tooth and nail to make sure that it's accessible for whomever is asking. Sometimes it doesn't work out and sometimes it's too expensive, or sometimes they want me to deconstruct, a 20,000 square foot building in four weeks with six people. Maybe if I don't sleep for eight years, we could do that. This works when I'm here, but not if over from over there. it can be expensive, however, because the, there is a lack of standardization in deconstruction. We can, there's a lot of wiggle room. So again, I don't have a hard and fast number because this industry is still fairly, I mean, I say it's new after I told you, it's like the most ancient building practice that we have on the on, on earth. However, it's really been revitalized, like it felt dormant for quite some time because traditional demolition just, well, when I say traditional, I mean demolition as we know it with backhoes and things like that really came to the forefront because it's cheap, dirty, and quick. And we like cheap, dirty and quick deconstruction really pushes that envelope because we're kind of, you know, we're expensive, we're slow, but we're excessively clean, right? I'm like no toxic lead dust cloud. Our asbestos is always abated. and when we find new asbestos, we re abate it. If you abate your asbestos and then you crush it, but there's secret asbestos under two other layers of laminate floor that when you tested didn't come back as asbestos, you're now, guess what? You're crushing asbestos. So we're cleaner and, but yeah, we're, it's more expensive. So it comes with changing the minds of people, right? And changing the minds of the communities around. And when you see a demolition permit posted on a house, the community can absolutely be outraged and really help push the envelope of deconstruct instead of demolish. So, sorry, we're more expensive, but you're creating more jobs by deconstructing and, you know, backhoes, they don't have families to feed. Maybe. Maybe they're a little backhoes out there, Gina.

Speaker 7 49:18

I have a, uh, two part question.

Speaker 3 49:19

I like it.

Speaker 7 49:20

Number one, that Dutch lap siding up there, I need it. Right, right. Great. Will you ship to South Bend?

Speaker 3 49:29

Will you pay for the shipping?

Speaker 7 49:31

Yes. Let's go onto the other question. I'm curious, I wanna hear more about the abate unit hazardous materials, especially the lead paint, asbestos. How do you handle

Speaker 3 49:40

Yeah, absolutely. And if you don't mind, can I, will you all be offended if I sit on this table? Okay. If it'll hold me. Okay.

Speaker 2 49:48

Ugh.

Speaker 3 49:48

So, because, well, let's say this, different municipalities have different rule and different states have different rules for lead abatement. I'll say that first and foremost. So what we do is we're, I mean, I'm OSHA 30, so I'm gonna be the safety, uh, the safety human on site. So I'm gonna be making sure that we're all following osha, rules for lead abatement. And because deconstruction has less there, there's less disruption of the materials, right? Like we're prying against the wood to wood behind it. So we're not having such big pieces of lead just crumbling into our dirt and things like that. And lead abatement is really, it's, it's not scary. It doesn't have to be scary. We need more education on what that could look like. But really, you can safely work with lead-based materials. If you're practicing basic hygiene, like OSHA promotes washing your hands, don't eat or drink next to where you're working, make sure you don't have straws because dust particles can get there. All of my crew have P 100 rated masks. We only work in incredibly ventilated areas if we are working on it, not on a job site. And back at our warehouse, we do have HEPA rated filter, like vacuum filters. That we can make sure that we clean up our materials and if needed, we do bring them to site just to make sure that we're not leaving our community worse off than we found it. As far as asbestos goes, I am a big advocate for paying people who know what they're doing. I'm not gonna go be like, Hey, I can totally abate your house in this, my understanding, and I could be wrong, and I know that this is like gonna be put on YouTube, so I don't want someone to yell at me. My understanding is if you are a Georgia Home resident and you are able to abate your own asbestos,

Speaker 5 51:43

that should stress you all

Speaker 3 51:44

out.

Speaker 5 51:44

But

Speaker 3 51:46

you are legally allowed to. I will not as failure asbestos, however, I work with some really fantastic company. ESA or, yeah, EAS America. And, they're both like E oh ES America abatement, one out of Atlanta and one out of Charleston. They both do fantastic jobs. I've never had a problem yet. and if I have a problem, then I change abatement companies because that's not why we're here. We wanna make sure that we're taking care of our communities, but also the neighbors. So when I was analyzing, hazardous material abatement, one of the national stats is when you crush, say, a 12,000 square foot home and it maybe has lead in it that dust cloud, and I am sure you're driven by and people are standing out there like this, just holding a hose. Cool. It does. I would argue it does nothing. I know it does something, but we're not gonna pick it apart. The dust cloud is like 400 square feet around your project, so you can impact up to four structures on any side with your dust cloud. So that one hose isn't gonna get you very far. And where does the water go? Where, like, where is it gonna go with all of those lead particles in it down your drains? All in, in the soil, who plays in the soil, little kids, animals, things like that. So if we can, if we can work with the lead in, in place as best as possible, and really eliminate the chances of dust clouds, that's what we're going to do. So do it safely, P 100 or more, that's your respirator. And then pay people who can abate asbestos. It's worth the money in the long run. Asbestos is linked to over what, like 75 types of cancer. Also, fun fact, if you smoke cigarettes and you work with asbestos, you're 90 times more likely to suffer apoptosis in your life. You didn't like ending on that one. Okay. Yes.

Speaker 2 54:03

Thank you for, thank you for those.

Speaker 8 54:09

Thank you for the far reaching presentation. Appreciate it very much.

Speaker 3 54:14

Thank you. Thank you for coming.

Speaker 8 54:15

And, uh, I wanted, say I'm a practicing architect in South Florida, and here's a visiting professor. south Florida is not a very old place. It's actually a very new place.

Speaker 2 54:26

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8 54:27

By comparison. And, uh, but the, uh, consciousness, exists and, it, it does not pervade nor define the marketplace, let's say, call it that. Mm-hmm. Amongst the builders or developers or private clients who would wanna make something happen, build something. Nevertheless, the opportunity is always there for. Developing it as a personal project. And I can tell you from my own experience in our own office, we have had made opportunities for ourselves to build fresh, you know, build new mm-hmm. But with, uh, you know, let's say a personalized approach to it, with thoughtful approach, then could be called the, uh, the state of the art, generally speaking. And, uh, and, and we have also had our chance at, at dealing with, you know, historic buildings, old structures. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and so all these, areas who to are very, very interesting and I find to be very relevant. The, the, the, uh, the reuse of materials, keeping them on site and

Speaker 5 55:41

Absolutely.

Speaker 8 55:41

And, uh, and adequate replacement of material.

Speaker 5 55:46

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8 55:47

which we have there in South Florida. Been able. Just south of the Lake Okeechobee, there is a place called Anoe that has very, very, uh, very good, material suppliers that work, to re repurpose, building parts that come, come out and, uh, one can purchase and have deliveries of Oh, great old, yeah. Old growth pine floors mm-hmm. And things like this mm-hmm. That are hard to find now because, the DA county pine, the local pine Oh, I know. Was very, very resilient. Is almost extinct now, so.

Speaker 3 56:23

Correct.

Speaker 8 56:23

So, in any case, uh, so these are all very, very interesting and I, the one word of encouragement I would say is that as, by educating ourselves as architects

Speaker 2 56:33

mm-hmm.

Speaker 8 56:34

We can become positioned to help others who might have the wherewithal to do it, but not the knowledge, you know, so, It's indeed, a question that far goes, reaches far beyond, money. And, and, and it, it's about, it's about the environment, all these things that you have presented well and, the concerns that we as architects may share.

Speaker 3 56:59

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8 57:00

But it's, it's, it's a specialty. It's not, you know, home Depot is not a specialty shop.

Speaker 3 57:05

Correct.

Speaker 8 57:05

It's quite the opposite.

Speaker 3 57:08

Right.

Speaker 8 57:08

And so one has to search out the specialty shops and the specialty builders, if you will, to be able to engage it and then develop one's own, uh, you know, through experience, develop one's own knowledge and be able to then, you know, offer it to private to to, to individuals who might need the help.

Speaker 3 57:31

Correct. And I would like to say, I hope, I mean, your concern that, you know, one is very specialized and Home Depot is not, I would say currently. Okay. As we, I mean the, the more conversations we have and the larger the drive or reclaimed, bless you. Reclaim materials grow and material hubs and material innovation centers. And if we can make them more commonplace, then I would like to think when you go to visit historic or salvage lumber, or if whenever you're looking for something, you have access to it. I mean, my dream in life would be to, you know, have a historic Home Depot right next door and compete, but we're not there yet. And I will say it's because it, this industry is still so infant, for lack of a better word, that I would like to think that these types of conversations are going to drive more of them to pop up. I just learned about the one here, um, by, from charity and by Al, but I. I wish I could say that with, you know, a flick of my finger. We can just magically have'em pop up and we can bring back the accessibility to Dade, to Dade County Pine, because from my understanding is it is quite resilient and it's hard to find because it's been over forested. It's been overused like, and a lot of times similar to American chestnut, right, which is gone. Right. I think we all know the lore of the, of the blight of the American chestnut. A lot of where we have access to those are in our historic home. They don't, they don't exist in our forest naturally anymore, but they do exist in historic structures that are being demolished. So not only are we losing that, that resource once, you know, with the blight of the, the American chestnut, but by throwing away the structure that it resides in, we are now super shooting ourselves in the foot because we've now thrown that material away twice essentially. So I really, and I will say one of the things that could help drive, making our, our reclamation yards and the deconstruction practice as a whole more commonplace is if architects,

Speaker 2 59:50

you guys

Speaker 3 59:51

and designers and people who are responsible for our structures, put fight for it. Your designs. I mean, you have the ability to go in and just be like, all right, everything is 16 on center and I'm not gonna fight that. That's code, right. However, can you make exceptions? Can you find historic windows that are the same all across the board? Because I know that one of the hardest things is making, making modern code fit, historic buildings we're designing and then forcing our historic materials to match. And then when they don't, we give up because it's hard or it's complicated and people, people don't wanna spend the extra time, money and stress, but. What if we're designing for the historic materials, then you're not forcing them into your design, you're designing with them. Then you don't, no one's gonna make you redesign. I mean, no one's gonna make you redesign. Someone will make you redesign, but then you're not fighting to force the materials to fit. You are fitting what already exists.

Speaker 2 1:01:00

Very good. Thank you.

Speaker 3 1:01:01

Of course. Anytime

Speaker 2 1:01:02

I, one question.

Speaker 9 1:01:05

Yeah. So, um,

Speaker 3 1:01:07

Matthew,

Speaker 9 1:01:10

my question has to do with, like urbanism and community. so is there an example, speaking anecdotally about a certain material that maybe a community found, like particularly, Like I have in my hometown, like there'll be like a neon sign that was renovated and people love it because like, this was a symbol of the community, you know, like is in your experience, has there been something like that that kind of has been a, a little bit of a statement piece for not just a particular owner, but a neighborhood?

Speaker 3 1:01:47

You know what I'm gonna say? Have you ever heard of Savannah Gray Brick?

Speaker 9 1:01:52

No.

Speaker 3 1:01:53

Okay, so it's not a neighborhood, it's Savannah. Historically, this brick was produced by one plantation for not a very long period of time. And it's all, all of the bricks are made out of, Savannah River Clay. It could be, you might have to fill me in on the facts a little bit, but so early in Savannah's founding, right? Uh, we're in an English colony and in London, a lot of the historic structures are gonna be what Limestone. They're gonna, they're, they're large scale stones. Well, they're small, large stones. But in Savannah, for some reason, where you got your bricks was very important to people and red brick, because you had to have it imported in the early colonial period. red brick was worth more than our purple discolored, mismatched, like not consistent sized bricks. So people would build these beautiful self-supporting masonry structures downtown. And, have you been to Savannah?

Speaker 9 1:02:56

Yes,

Speaker 3 1:02:56

I have. Okay. So downtown, like on all the squares, they're very, they're like three story beautiful row houses, things like that. But they look like they're large scale stoned. They're Savannah grays underneath. So what people would do is they would pay for the cheaper brick, the Savannah grays, the local option, and then they would have master placers go in and they would cover it and make it look like they could afford large scale. Stone like this, it looks like this, but it's plaster and it covered them up. Now it's very important to Savannah's culture to remember the people who built to remember, uh, the enslaved peoples who were producing these bricks on a massive scale. And so people are now showing that their structures are Savannah grays and paying homage to those who came before. So in my world, Savannah Gray, I do know that at the top end of the market they do, people have sold them or have sold them, have sold them for$12 a brick, which is outlandish if you ask me. And I think really inaccessible to a very significant, building material local to Savannah, but we retail them for$4. Mm-hmm. I love your question. Where are you from, if you mind me asking?

Speaker 9 1:04:10

I'm from, Columbia, Tennessee. It's where the, uh, Hannah Montana movie was called.

Closing Thanks, Contact Info, and Next Speaker Series Announcement

Speaker 3 1:04:17

Well, if it makes you feel better, I'm from Montana, which is her last name. Thank you. Of course. And thank you all for being here. It was a true pleasure. Um, Notre Dame is beautiful and I'm honored to have now been in, uh, experienced Rudy and his, uh, stomping grounds. I only reference that once. It's fine. and if you all have questions, please feel free to email me. I'm, I will say I'm bad at email, so I will get to it, but if you are worried, you can call and leave me a voicemail and I will absolutely call you back. And I might be the only 31-year-old adult who will do that. I love voicemails. Leave them to me all the time. Alright,

1 1:05:03

well, we'd like to thank Katie for coming all the way up from Savannah for her presentation and all the time she spent with the students over the last two days. just a reminder, our next. Speaker series event will be next Wednesday. Uh, and we'll be keeping on with the savanna, theme with Christian. So, from Soill and Soill Architects and he will pre be presenting his title is, a new humanism, so five 15 here next Wednesday. So thank you all for coming. Have a good night.

Speaker 2 1:05:36

And what of you have those? Thank you. I know I

1 1:05:50

disappeared

Speaker 4 1:05:50

off. Oh

Speaker 2 1:05:51

look, almost right on time.