2013 TxA INTERACTIVE 87 86 COOPERATIVE FABRICATIONS and the parallel intentions of diversion within the con- struction, repurpose, and demolition processes inherent to the production of architectural design. All three case studies utilize and appro-priate construction waste and consider the repercussions of the construction waste within a novel form of fabrication and processing for the built environment. Incorporating the three Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle) into construction, renovation, and demolition waste management creates a closed-loop manu-facturing and purchasing cycle. This signifcantly reduces the need to extract raw materials, reduces the amount of materials going to landfll sites, and reduces the life-cycle costs of buildings and build-ing materials. 2. BASIS OF DEVELOPMENT According to the United States Environmental Protec- tion Agency for Region 8, the qualifying basis of con- struction and demolition materials is as follows: Construction and demolition (C&D) materials consist of the debris generated during the construc-tion, reno- vation, and demolition of buildings, roads, and bridges. C&D materials often contain bulky, heavy materials, 1. INTRODUCTION This paper will discuss three scaled prototypes that uti- lized the idea of how repurposed waste materi-als are sourced within the feld of architecture, and the devel- opmental nature of the design utility based on the pa- rameters of repurposing within the underlying theme of “synthetic manufacturing.” The basic use of these prototypes ranges from 1) an architectural modular developed as an attempt to address the issue of con- struction waste produced by demolished project sites for unskilled workers within developing countries; 2) an art installation piece that addresses overstocked and over-ordered materials and EPS foam, originally used for insulation, by contractors for an existing institutional construction project in Houston, Texas; and 3) an ac- ademic design-research project that was further pur- sued as an art installation sculpture, made for the HKSZ (Hong Kong Shen Zhen) Biennale, which uses localized wood materials, pre-fabricated through CNC and tried- and-tested to be constructed ofsite to limit the onsite production, delivery, and man-power. Each of these projects investigates the range of de- veloping processes of computational design-research Synthetic Manufacturing Wendy W. Fok Assistant Professor, University of Houston College of Architecture Doctor of Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Creative Director, WE-DESIGNS