Designers and clients can support a circular building practice in different ways. On the one hand, it is possible to optimise the capacity of every building to accommodate the evolving demands and needs of its users effectively, increasing its utility, extending its service life and thus maximising its value over time. On the other hand, it is possible to optimise the resource efficient management of all building-related material flows, avoiding the depletion of natural resources and the production of waste and thus minimising buildings’ environmental impact.
To reduce the consumption of virgin, non-renewable resources, reclaimed building components can be used again, repaired, remanufactured or recycled.
In a circular design and construction practice, one can avoid new construction and review and revalue, upgrade and refurbish what already exists. Several architectural qualities keep a building’s value up over time, facilitating maintenance and repair, while enabling current and future service life extensions. They include strategic qualities, for example the asset’s location, but also spatial qualities such as a multi-purpose lay-out.
Complementary, to close material flows, components and materials must be reclaimed without damage to maintain their value, facilitate their processing and minimise waste. Therefore, various technical design qualities are key factors. They relate to design choices about, for example, the durability of components, their independent assembly and the reversibility of their connection.
To reduce the consumption of virgin, non-renewable resources, reclaimed building components and materials can be used again, repaired, remanufactured or recycled. Building components and materials should for example be safe and healthy to reuse or pure to recycle.
Aside the environmental savings of closed material loops and the economic benefit of enduring asset value, the design qualities that are collected in this booklet offer other advantages and opportunities too. In literature these benefits are often presented as an added value of a ‘circular’ building, although they are not necessarily related to closed material loops. That does however not mean these advantages are not valuable. Think for example of facilitated inspection, maintenance and small repairs of easily adaptable structures, or imagine the reduced hindrance and nuisance during their refurbishment.