Beyond Recycling: Advancing a Reuse-Driven Future

Join the AIANY Committee on the Environment to explore the challenges of integrating material reuse into the built environment through a financial, logistical, and policy-driven lens. Examining case studies from Seattle, San Antonio, and New York, speakers will highlight cost-effective reuse strategies, key infrastructure shifts, and policy mechanisms that support a circular economy, including deconstruction ordinances. Participants will gain insight into how project planning, procurement, and workforce training must evolve to scale reuse, while also addressing common hurdles such as storage constraints. The discussion will provide strategies that architects, designers, developers, and advocates can consider to advance material reuse and reduce carbon impact in their projects.

Introductions:
Wei Wang, AIA, Senior Associate, Dattner Architects
Greg Bencivengo, AIA, Associate Principal, Slade Architecture

Speakers:
‘Deconstruction Dave’ Bennink, Founder, NYC Circular Construction Network
Stephanie Phillips, Senior Program Manager, Deconstruction & Circular Economy, City of San Antonio

Moderator:
Greg Bencivengo, AIA, Associate Principal, Slade Architecture

About the Speakers:
Dave Bennink is Director of the Building Deconstruction Network and owns Re-Use Consulting. He trains groups focusing on reusable materials and embodied carbon, and has salvaged/deconstructed over 5000 projects in North America, existing within the circular economy since 1993. Significant to the City, Dave has formed the NYC Circular Construction Network whose goal is to unite various projects in the NYC area that are working towards a circular economy, spurred by the recent ‘Circular Design and Construction Guidelines’. The network’s focus is on driving action and facilitating “material matchmaking” between current and future projects.

Stephanie Phillips is an urban planner and policymaker specializing in heritage conservation and the circular economy. As head of the Deconstruction and Circular Economy Program for the City of San Antonio, Texas, she oversees the city’s deconstruction ordinance, expands workforce development through a deconstruction contractor training program, and leads efforts to recover and reuse building materials via the City’s Material Innovation Center. This model connects post-consumer building materials with community organizations focused on affordable housing, public infrastructure, art, and education. Beyond San Antonio, Phillips actively contributes to nonprofits and coalitions advancing embodied carbon reduction and circular economy policies, including Build Reuse and the international Climate Heritage Network. She is also the co-founder of Circular San Antonio, a local circularity nonprofit, and a 2023 J.M.K. Innovation Prize awardee.

Greg Bencivengo is an architect and Associate Principal at Slade Architecture. Alongside design work, he has led a materials research group that generated spec guidelines for healthier materials, served on the Steering Committee for the Design for Freedom (DFF) initiative, and co-developed key components of the DFF Toolkit. Bencivengo is a co-chair of the AIANY COTE Material Health and Circularity Subcommittee and has taught at Parsons School of Constructed Environments.

Wei Wang is a Senior Associate at Dattner Architects. Wang co-chairs Dattner’s Sustainable Practice Group, leading holistic research on building materials and circular design. She also co-chairs the AIANY COTE Materials Health and Circularity Subcommittee and is a visiting critic at GASPP and Parsons.