the green ballet of daruma-otoshi

japan’s Kajima Corporation has developed a new technique of demolition that is both a more sustainable method and poeticly beautiful to watch sped up. daruma-otoshi is a method of removing the materials of a building floor by floor, systematically lowering the building through the use of robotic columns. named after a japanese game that removes the bottom piece of a stack of blocks, kajima’s method is 20% faster, creates less air pollution, and contributes greatly to the recycling effort as demolished architecture can be 40% of all waste in some regions.

“Using concrete as an example, the researchers show that ramping up concrete recycling from the current 27% to even 50% would reduce 2.7–5.6 million tons of CO2 annually, which equals taking 612,000 cars off U.S. roads.”