"Achieving Sustainability through Durability, Adaptability, and Deconstructibility," by Mark D. Webster and Dirk M. Kestner, STRUCTURE magazine
A building's life-cycle environmental impact includes both operational and embodied components. Operational impacts are those such as energy consumption that occur during use, while embodied impacts are mostly due to the production and installation of the building's materials. An example of an embodied impact is the pollution released during the extraction, manufacture, and installation of a building component. The longer a building remains in service, the smaller the embodied impacts are per year of service. Therefore, efforts to minimize embodied impacts must also include strategies to increase service life. This article discusses the validity of common service life assumptions, and challenges design professionals to achieve greater sustainability by incorporating durability, adaptability, and deconstructibility in their designs.