Designing for material circularity to avoid the «take-make-waste» approach common since mass industrialization implies a far more interconnected conceptual strategy including end-of-life considerations from the onset of both the design and construction planning processes. Buildings erected conventionally and according to modern standards are in a sense a heap of raw materials put together with all manner of durable connections, glues, weatherproofing membranes, plastics and wet joint compounds to perform in line with fireproofing, weatherproofing or other technical criteria and to maintain these conditions over a building's lifespan - durability has always denoted long-lasting.
End of life scenarios in relation to materials and systems have rarely been considered and resources often end up in landfills as renovations are required, repeating the same wasteful processes. Adaptive reuse, functional renovations, and energy retrofits are all ways of giving the integrated energy flows required to erect a building a second or even a third lifecycle moving away from linear processes. Keeping materials in buildings retains the carbon initially spent in service, while reducing the amount of extraction and production energies required for new construction.
Offsite construction and prefabrication are often identified as facilitating circularity. Components are designed, produced and delivered to streamline onsite assembly and potentially their disassembly. This is theoretically possible, however, conventional building with all its regulatorily imposed seamlessness along with modern building culture's fascination with a minimalist aesthetic impede systemic disassembly: Removing plasterboard or ceramic tile, or continuous foam insulation, just to name these, implies destructive demolition making recycling and reusing of embedded components difficult - nearly impossible.
A revolution in design is necessary. Design for disassembly, too marginally applied, should be integrated into construction standards, codes and regulatory frameworks to engrain buildings with a capacity for change. Offsite manufacturing in this respect can be conducive to circularity as assembly details are already designed to facilitate onsite connections and coordination. Managing resources throughout their lifecycle and planning for their reuse can also be facilitated through the data management required in manufacturing.
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| Façade components in the circular economy - TU Delft - by Christina Michael (2016) Master's Thesis |
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