2010 Galleries
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Galleries // 2010 Spark:Pro // SFIS
SFIS
Winner - Gold
Competition: Spark:Pro
Designer: Mark Sarkisian
Design Type: Architectural System
Company / Organization / School: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
Sustainable Form Inclusion System: Environmentally Responsible Structural Systems The Sustainable Form Inclusion System (SFIS) is designed to provide structural systems that achieve the highest level of sustainability by minimizing the building’s carbon footprint / embodied energy. This engineered form-inclusion system uses materials that would otherwise become waste in landfills to significantly reduce raw materials, labor for placement, and transportation of material for building construction. More than 75 billion disposable plastic beverage containers are discarded each year, with 8 in 10 reaching landfills. American consumers also use 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. These bags photodegrade when discarded, breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest them. The SFIS provides an alternate use for plastic bottles, plastic bags, waste Styrofoam, packing materials, rubber tires, or other similar waste materials by compressing them into controlled forms to be embedded within concrete structural slabs. These forms inclusions are specifically engineered to reduce the material (concrete and rebar) required for the structure and overall structural weight (seismic mass) that affects demand on the lateral and gravity systems.
