The transition to a circular built environment will not happen at our desks. It requires places where assumptions are challenged, ideas demonstrated, and stakeholders brought together.
At VUB Architectural Engineering, we use our living labs and demonstrators as spaces for such co-creation and collective learning.
Our research on Life Cycle Design and Circularity connects long-term thinking with hands-on experimentation. We investigate how buildings can accommodate change, how materials can remain valuable over multiple life cycles, and how circular business ecosystems can emerge around them. Through co-creation and demonstration, we learn not only how to build differently, but also how to organise a circular construction economy.
The three living labs below each represent a different chapter in this journey. They are the subject of continuing experiments, adaptations, and learnings in various projects.
Envisioned a giant Meccano set, the Circular Retrofit Lab (CRL) was designed to come apart almost as thoughtfully as it was assembled. Its next refurbishment should require no demolition works, no waste container, and no disruptive construction site. Instead, building elements can be disassembled, replaced, upgraded and reused through simple, clean and reversible interventions.
Named after the architect who designed the original student residences, the Willy Van Der Meeren (WVDM) Living Lab carries forward his spirit of innovation. Rather than treating these outdated 1970s buildings as a problem to be solved, we embraced them as an opportunity to explore how architectural heritage can become a driver for circular transformation.
Our youngest sibling is a demonstrator of ‘next-generation’ circular construction, using reusable components, design-for-disassembly principles, and … low-carbon materials! Pursuing these ambitions required some radical choices: no cement, no steel reinforcement, and advanced prefabrication. Concrete is dead... long live concrete.
These three demonstrators differ in scale, maturity and focus, but they share a common mission: learning circularity by doing. Together they show that circular construction is not just about materials. It is about collaboration, adaptability, new business models, heritage appreciation, user engagement and long-term stewardship of our built environment.
At the Circular Retrofit Lab, the WVDM Living Lab and Reconstruct demonstrator, our researchers, construction professionals, policymakers and users explore together how buildings can become adaptable, reusable and regenerative.
We hope their stories inspire you to experiment, question conventions, and join us in building a construction sector where value is created not by consuming more resources, but by making better use of what already exists.
Let's learn together.
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Image: Circular Retrofit Lab, by KADERSTUDIO