Cellophane House, photo © Peter Aaron/Esto

Cellophane House was designed for ease of assembly, disassembly and reassembly. With the conclusion of the Home Delivery show at The Museum of Modern Art on October 26, the next phase of our experiment is beginning. Our intention is to disassemble and rebuild the house on a new location, helping to offset the millions of tons of construction and demolition debris generated in the United States each year.

How do we remove a five-story building from a constrained urban site and reassemble it on a new location? Without a new destination for the house, we developed two possible scenarios for removal from the 53^rd Street location. The first scenario involved un-stacking the house with chunks left intact, then moving them away on several flat bed trucks.  The second scenario involved deglazing the house, un-stacking and placing the separated chunks on the ground, disassembling them and carefully storing the pieces for later reassembly or distribution to separate recycling or reclamation streams.  We chose the latter option because it offered multiple possibilities for future reassembly and allows us to evaluate the full potential of the design for disassembly intent.  The photos below document the first stages in the disassembly process.

Disassembly preparations included labeling every component with very high bond, waterproof adhesive labels. The labels are keyed to drawings for easy reassembly.

All glazing is labeled, removed, and placed in wood storage crates fabricated on site. Crates were designed to contain each glazing component and fit into the storage trucks exactly. Drawings indicate where each crate is stored within the truck.

NextGen SmartWrap^TM panels in the center span of the house are removed, creating a large opening for removing internal components from the house.

The inner layer of NextGen SmartWrap^TM was removed to provide access to splice joints between floors.

Aluminum angles for folding glass doors carefully grouped and labeled.

A dry van is parked on site for storage and shipment of the parts.

On Nov 9, the house was fully deglazed. A crane will arrive this week to lift the separate chunks and place them on the ground, where they will be disassembled and packed. Photos will be posted next week.