"The Big Dig" Gets Recycled
by Kara DiCamillo, Newport, Rhode Island 
on 06.30.06
When people residing in and around the Boston area hear the words “The Big Dig” they either laugh or shudder. The $14.6 billion dollar project was first proposed in the 1980s and with the groundbreaking in 1991, the goal was to change Boston’s downtown roadways to make it easier for traffic to get in and out of the city. Now, 15 years later, the project is finally coming to an end and we have to say the new roads are definitely more convenient. Paul Pedini worked for 11 years as vice president of Modern Continental Construction, one of the project’s principal contractors. He now lives in a 4,300 square foot home he refers to as The Big Dig House that was completed this past March. The house, located in Lexington, Mass., incorporates 600,000 pounds of recycled materials from The Big Dig. It’s built from highway panels and bridge piers salvaged from what’s known as the largest public-works project in the history of the United States. Because the project had no more use for so many of the materials, administrators didn’t want to pay to store the slabs so landfill was the other option. But for Pedini, burying perfectly good materials didn’t make sense. In his home, two concrete Inverset panels (which once formed part of a temporary ramp leading to Boston’s Tobin Bridge) hang in the rafters while a 27-inch-wide painted girder (that once helped support slurry walls along Storrow Drive) now helps brace the home’s 69,000-pound roof. “It’s kind of like Junkyard Wars meets Habitat for Humanity,” Pedini commented. The Big Dig House was the winner of the first Metropolis-sponsored Next Generation competition. For more information and photos of other materials used, visit ::Metropolis Magazine
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Don't forget the best thing about the Big Dig - it opened up 100s of acres of land in Downtown Boston that had been previously occupied by a massive freeway and will be replaced by a combination of parks and new buildings.
As a soon-to-be Bostonian, I've gotta say that's really cool. I'd always heard the jokes about the Big Dig, but seeing first-hand how much space it opened up and what they're doing it really is quite amazing.
I'm all for keeping serviceable materials out of landfills, but 4300 sq ft? Please.
400m² isnt a bad size for a house. While I suppose some people would have rather seen 20 shoeboxes with paperthin walls seperating them built, I think this is about the size a house should be.
This is a nice looking house! It looks like he probably got the building materials for free, since he was "saving" his company the cost of having to landfill everything. I wonder how much he had to spend out of his own pocket to get this thing designed and built. I wonder if your or I could get such a deal. I would love to have a house built from recycled construction materials, and I know there's plenty of that around here.
richms: No need to resort to hyperbole. Who suggested shoeboxes? My girlfriend and I live in a house about 1/4 that size, and a friend of mine with her husband and three kids live in a house that's about 1700 sq ft. Neither house is short of space. 4300 sq ft is quite excessive, imo.
I wonder if his was one of the companies that scammed the city and state out of hundreds of thousands of $$$, or the company that used inferior concrete in the construction resulting in the leaks in the tunnel? I'm sure the slabs he reclaimed were made out of good concrete, one wouldn't want their 4000+sq ft mansion caving in on them would they?
I'm all for reclaiming items but since the city of Boston paid for these slabs wouldn't it have gone to better use to have built some MUCH neeeded low income housing- hell even housing that would rent out at a regular rate for the area is much needed. Even if the housing were built ouside of the city it would be a better use to have housed more than one family rather than one rich contractor.
jeff its ok, now you know the benifits of going to college, you get to live in a nice comfortable size home... any by the way there are actually more the 5 people living in that house
Jeff,
I visited the house and spoke with Paul about his plans to use construction waste to build public housing. The trouble with public housing is that the public (i.e. our elected officials) need to approve and fund projects. As of a few months ago that hadn't happened - so if you really believe that recycled construction materials should be used in public housing then get on the phone or write a letter to your local officials asking them to propose a project.
Here is more about Paul and his "engineered precycling" ideas:
http://wbztv.com/watercooler/local_story_211175313.html
Anthony
4300sq.ft really is not excessive at all. I have a family of 3 and have a house 3000sq.ft larger than this. imo this is not that big, it is a really neat house and the fact that it is built completely from recycled building parts is amazing. I dont see peoples problem with a house of this size, It is recycled?
thanks for posting this! Just wondering if a treehugger admin could make a correction: The house is actually 3400sf net square feet, not 4300sf. ( I happen to know because I'm the architect). Somehow this misinformation that the house is so large has been proliferated on the internet.