(MIT: Cambridge, MA) -- What if construction materials could be put together and taken apart as easily as LEGO bricks? Such reconfigurable masonry would be disassembled at the end of a building’s lifetime and reassembled into a new structure in a sustainable cycle that could supply generations of buildings using the same physical building blocks.

That’s the idea behind circular construction, which aims to reuse and repurpose a building’s materials whenever possible to minimize the manufacturing of new materials and reduce the construction industry’s “embodied carbon,” which refers to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with every process throughout a building’s construction, from manufacturing to demolition.

Now MIT engineers, motivated by circular construction’s eco potential, are developing a new kind of reconfigurable masonry made from 3D-printed recycled glass. Using a custom, 3D-glass-printing technology provided by MIT spinoff Evenline, the team has made strong, multilayered glass bricks, each in the shape of a figure eight, that are designed to interlock much like LEGO bricks.

 …