Austrian researchers have built a building whose brick walls can be dismantled, transported and reassembled without being destroyed.
The principle is particularly aimed at buildings used for only 10 to 20 years, such as certain supermarkets or commercial premises. Their bricks could remain usable long after the building is demolished. Today, the mortar traditionally used to connect bricks often makes it difficult to recover them without damaging them.
The experimental building during its initial construction with reusable brick walls.
Source: IBPSC – TU Graz, via New Atlas
To avoid this waste, the Graz University of Technology team worked with manufacturer Wienerberger. It developed prefabricated wall elements in a factory, assembled with connections that can be removed. The walls can thus be almost entirely dismantled and then reused in another construction.
This possibility must not come at the expense of the building’s performance. The researchers therefore designed walls 44 cm thick, with insulation integrated into the bricks. The elements also arrive already plastered from the factory. Their stability can be ensured by the weight of the roof or by vertical rods tensioned through the bricks.
In practical terms, the team built a small demonstration building to test the system under realistic conditions. It then dismantled and rebuilt it elsewhere. After this operation, the walls remained in good condition and the building remained fully functional. The connections also passed the planned checks, particularly those concerning watertightness, insulation and stability.
A team rebuilds the experimental building after its complete dismantling.
Source: IBPSC – TU Graz, via New Atlas
The building after its reassembly: the walls remained in good condition.
Source: IBPSC – TU Graz, via New Atlas
The environmental benefit mainly comes from the fact that manufacturing new bricks consumes resources and energy. Directly reusing a wall therefore avoids part of this new production. According to the calculations presented by the team, three use cycles would reduce CO₂ emissions by around 60% compared with a comparable conventional construction. This estimate does indeed concern several successive uses of the same elements.
The question remains how these walls will actually age after one or two decades. The researchers plan to monitor their condition using vibrations. Each wall has frequencies at which it naturally vibrates. A change in these frequencies over the years can reveal a change in its ability to support loads, without having to damage it to test it.
The project is therefore not simply about recovering bricks after demolition. It aims to preserve prefabricated wall sections for long enough to serve in several successive buildings. This approach could also preserve economic value for the elements when the first building reaches the end of its useful life.
The system has now passed the demonstration-building stage, but its behavior after 10 or 20 years remains to be confirmed. This monitoring should determine whether walls that have genuinely aged can be dismantled, inspected and then used again with the same performance guarantees.