🏗️ From Ski Lifts to Skyscrapers: Giving Old Steel a New Life

The Main Idea

Swiss researchers transform abandoned ski lift steel trusses into sustainable building columns, reducing carbon emissions by up to 197% compared to traditional concrete alternatives! 🌱♻️

The R&D

As climate change forces ski resorts to close ⛷️❌, Swiss engineers are hitting the slopes - not for skiing, but for salvaging! A groundbreaking study by researchers at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences has found an ingenious way to repurpose abandoned ski lift structures into building components.

Here's the cool part: instead of melting down the steel (which would waste energy), they're keeping the trusses intact and filling them with Cleancrete©, an eco-friendly concrete alternative. 🔧🏗️ This creates super-strong building columns that can support multi-story structures while significantly reducing environmental impact.

The numbers speak for themselves! 📊 These repurposed columns produce:

• 26.6% less carbon emissions than wooden alternatives
• A whopping 197% less than traditional concrete columns

The researchers even compared different collection methods:
🚁 Helicopter retrieval
🏗️ Crane collection (the greener option!)

Each salvaged column saves about 1.46 tons of steel from going to waste and prevents 1,365 kg of CO2 emissions. Talk about a win-win! 🎯🌍

The best part? This isn't just a one-off solution. The team is developing a database to help contractors locate and reuse these structures efficiently, paving the way for a more circular construction industry. 🔄📱

Concepts to Know

• Global Warming Potential (GWP) 🌡️: A measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere, using CO2 as a reference. Measured in kg CO2-eq (CO2 equivalent).
• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) 🔄: A methodology for assessing the environmental impacts of a product throughout its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to disposal.
• Cleancrete© 🧪: A newly developed cement-free concrete alternative with significantly lower environmental impact than traditional concrete.
• Circular Economy ♻️: An economic system aimed at eliminating waste and promoting the continual use of resources, as opposed to a traditional linear economy (make, use, dispose). This Concept has been explained also in the article "🏗️ Breaking Ground: The Future of Concrete is Sand-Free!".

Source: Kiesel, A.; Brandi, G.; Schlatter, J.; Gerber, A.; Langenberg, S. Structural Reuse of Decommissioned Ski Lift Steel Trusses for Load-Bearing Applications. Architecture 2024, 4, 835-853. https://doi.org/10.3390/architecture4040044

From: Zurich University of Applied Sciences; Oberli Ingenieurbüro AG; Institute for Technology in Architecture (ITA).