Used components: Who wants our elevator?

Almost two decades in this building, but I've never looked so closely at the flooring in the lobby.

How firmly do the rectangular granite slabs stick together?

This question could decide their fate.

If they can be detached from each other, the mottled gray panels may be given a second life in another building.

If they are too tightly attached to each other, they are crushed and at best end up as aggregate in road construction.

Judith Lembke

Editor in the "Housing" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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First, however, their condition is assessed, they are measured and counted, and the result is then entered in a material inventory.

There they are in a long list next to lights, suspended ceilings and banisters - all components that will soon no longer be needed in this location.

The FAZ is moving.

The editorial office, publishing house and subsidiaries are leaving the Frankfurt Galluswarte location and making room for new quarters.

Where people research, write and calculate today, around 600 apartments, new offices, shops, two day-care centers and a primary school are being built.

While the employees are cleaning out their offices and considering what can move into the new high-rise, the start-up Concular is inspecting the buildings that are to be demolished on behalf of the builders.

Concular should save as many treasures as possible from ending up in the landfill.

To do this, the employees pick up all the components that can be reused.

In the second step, the start-up brokers the dismantled bricks, slabs or banisters to new buyers via a digital platform - an internet exchange for used building materials.

Architectural firms can search the database for parts they need for new projects.

If they find something suitable, Concular ensures that the old building materials are brought to the new construction site and measures the CO2 saved and the waste avoided.

So far, the main driver behind giving old parts a second chance has been sustainability.

Because they contain a lot of gray energy - CO2 and also material that was once consumed,

to produce the components and bring them to this location.

Not to mention the physical and mental labor that people once did to get this building up.

Now, for what must have been the thousandth time, I'm standing in the high-ceilinged entrance hall of the editorial office and looking up.

But for the first time I look at the steps, the railing and the elevator with the eye of a recycler.

Although I've been annoyed about this elevator so many times because it didn't work again, it pains me to think that it could soon be hazardous waste.

The editorial building is from the eighties, a child of its time.

Nobody plans and builds in this way anymore.

The huge glass surfaces mean that you almost always meet window cleaners in the house.

But the lobby is bright with daylight.

The wide, long corridors in the editorial office can be considered a waste of space.

But we also celebrated the best parties there before Corona.

What influence has architecture had on the texts over the past few decades?

Did it set the tone in the sports department that the colleagues on the top floor have the widest view?

And if the separation between publishing house and editors were perhaps less strict, one would not have to cross the street to meet colleagues from the other area?

Annabelle von Reutern looks around and sighs.

It won't be easy to get enthusiasts excited about the Eighties-look components.

"Personally, I really like things that are typical of the time," says the architect, who accompanies the inventory for Concular.

"But this project will be a challenge because it is very special." In order for these stair railings to be installed elsewhere, the architect would have to plan with them from the start.

"In the future, the form must follow the availability of the material," says von Reutern, in analogy to the design principle

, according to which the form should be based primarily on the function.