Big Dig House on CNBC

Thanks to CNBC for featuring the Big Dig House in the online story: Salvaged Sanctuaries. Six years after its construction there is still renewed interest not only in the house itself but in the topic of recycling infrastructural waste. Admittedly, one of the limiting factors in this project was the sheer size and weight of the salvaged structure. Any fabrication including cutting of members and creating new connections was prohibitively expensive. Which leads us to the next obvious topic – Precycling… We are still asking the question: What if when we create the inevitable temporary roadways and bridges we already build with the second use in mind? As these infrastructures become 'obsolete' their materials can return to the public realm, precycled for schools, housing, libraries, etc. One thing we learned the hard way on this project is that this kind of comprehensive thinking cannot be implemented without extensive bureaucratic hurdles. Which leads us to the second question: To create significant and necessary change in our built environment, do architects (at least some of us) need to focus their efforts on policy rather than design? Instead of the 'hardware' of our built environments, is its 'software' of codes, politics, and processes in need of  a severe reboot?