A Reuse-Ready Timber Slab-and-Column System for Modular Building Structures

The construction industry is a significant contributor to resource consumption and waste generation. To address this issue, component reuse has been proposed as a way to prevent valuable building elements from being discarded and avoid producing new ones. However, the lack of circular economy principles in existing structures makes it difficult to extract and exploit reusable components fully. This paper presents a new load-bearing timber system (Pixel Slab) designed for disassembling and reassembling multiple times over the building's lifespan. The system goes beyond the traditional concepts of modularity and reversibility, providing designers with a minimum kit of parts that can be used to make localized adjustments and accommodate a wide range of building designs – such as floor geometry, load conditions, and supports distribution – with little to no new material input. This allows for functional design requirements that are difficult to predict over the long term. The system also focuses on low-tech assembly and disassembly processes, embodied environmental impacts, and manufacturing costs, all of which aim to increase the potential for component reuse. The proposed timber solution proved to be particularly suited to increase the sustainability of short-lived buildings.