Syracuse, NY -- Cameron Lassiter believes he has an alternative to demolition when it comes to doing something about Syracuse’s 1,600 vacant buildings.
“Just take one house down and then use the material from that house to patch up all these other houses that are scheduled to be demolished. Then you’re saving those houses from being taken down,” Lassiter said. “All they need is a little patchwork.”
Hence the name for Patchwork Collective, a fledgling deconstruction enterprise started by Lassiter, Jimmy Brunner and Paulina Kernacova, students at the Syracuse University School of Architecture.
Patchwork grew out of a design entrepreneurship class taught by SU architecture professor Kevin Lair. The class started thinking about designing new uses for the stuff we throw away.
Lassiter, 26, and Brunner, 35, are architects studying for their master’s degrees. Kernacova, 24, an undergraduate, honed in on construction and demolition debris. C&D waste makes up 40 to 60 percent of a city’s waste stream, Lassiter said.
“That’s a huge amount of material that could potentially be usable again,” he said.
The key word is “potentially,” because a lot of choreography is involved to make deconstruction an efficient, cost-effective alternative to demolition.
You need to know what buildings face demolition, what kind of materials are in them and how much of it is there. You need a work force of people schooled in taking apart buildings and putting them back together. You need a plan for using the materials before you start deconstruction, to avoid storage costs. Finally, you need the design skills to make something useful and aesthetically pleasing out of what otherwise would be considered junk.
Some of these things are happening in Syracuse, but in a decentralized fashion. “It’s really just us connecting the dots that are already there,” Lassiter said.
One of those dots is D-Build, a Syracuse design/deconstruction/development business started by industrial designer Rob Englert and SU design professor Don Carr. D-Build has begun to fill the information breach by creating an online marketplace for reclaimed materials and products made from them.
Both Patchwork and D-Build are in the orbit of iBox, an idea factory for sustainable business practices formed by Syracuse University, the Syracuse Center of Excellence and others. Lair, the SU architecture professor, is deeply involved in iBox.
“They’re similar in that both are trying to find what combination in the whole deconstruction/reuse world is going to work for them,” Lair said. “If we can help mentor and make connections, maybe D-Build and Patchwork together will be successful.”
In addition to being an adviser to Patchwork, Lair also is a client. Lassiter and his colleagues are creating display boxes for the windows of his brick warehouse building on East Division Street in Syracuse’s Little Italy. The boxes will hold prototypes of green houses developed at iBox. The Patchwork crew also is designing a community gallery space in the basement.
For now, this type of work is the only revenue coming in. Patchwork has designed a bike rack made out of cast-iron radiators but needs a sale in order to make a prototype. Since June, it has received free office space and mentoring at the Student Sandbox, a business incubator inside the Tech Garden downtown. Lassiter, a soft-spoken Texan, stayed here all summer while Kernacova and Brunner took jobs out of town. They’re back in the classrooms of Slocum Hall this fall.
Patchwork’s business model is still evolving. It’s part architectural design and part deconstruction, and all of it is a nonprofit social enterprise. In addition to improving the housing stock of the city, the business would create jobs in deconstruction and construction.
“We’re not in it to make a profit,” Lassiter said. “We’re in it to see the deconstruction business thrive.”
That won’t happen overnight.
"One of the challenges to this kind of biz model is that it does take longer," Lair said. "It's easy to come up with something to make a buck, as compared to something sustainable. We're trying to find ways to incubate these businesses, give them support, give them more time to develop."
Contact Marie Morelli at mmorelli@syracuse.com and 315-470-2220.