Due to the characteristic of the technical composition of the buildings, its functional durability ends up determining its physical durability. In addition, sometimes the inability to adapt to environmental changes and user demands are factors that reduce the lifetime of buildings.
Given this scenario, deconstruction appears as an alternative to demolition, and is a strategy to help increase the amount of components to be reused or the materials to be recycled. Thus, in order to reduce the volume of waste destined for landfills, the objective of the research consisted of a comparative theoretical study between the standard practice of demolition and a proposal of good practices, or rational. For that, an exploratory case study was conducted at a Federal Institution of Higher Education located in the city of Curitiba / PR. The result of the research demonstrated the recovery potential of 40.1% of the evaluated items, since the volume of waste generated for the landfill depends on the amount of materials and components recovered from the building. In this way, an alternative proposal to demolition becomes not only the best choice from the environmental point of view, but also a process
capable of providing economic and social benefits.