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Evaluation of Circular Construction Works During Design Phase: An Overview of Valuation Tools

Book Contribution - Book Chapter Conference Contribution

The construction industry is one of the largest producers of waste. The Circular Economy Action Plan of the EU aims to tackle this issue and aspires to enhance the sustainability of the construction industry by adopting more circular principles and bio-based material use. For this purpose, an approach is being developed that facilitates coherence between technical, economical, legal, social aspects, and business models for circular design and building with bio-based materials in the Interreg Circular Bio-Based Construction Industry (CBCI) project. Within the scope of the project, tests and evaluations will be performed in a real-life setting, requiring the construction of a prototype house, the living lab (LL) located in Ghent. LL will be designed to incorporate circular principles like design-for-disassembly (DfD) and modular design, urban mining, reuse, use of recycled materials and compostable bio-based materials. In the search for circular construction methods a number of tools were used in an iterative process during the design phase of the living lab. In order to support the design process, an evaluation method is necessary to score the overall circularity. However, there is no standardized or well‐established method to measure circularity. In this study, it is aimed to introduce a combination of existing tools on a case study. This approach should contribute to the creation of a holistic assessment of the circularity of the LL, which in turn will lead to buildings with circular material use by stimulating reuse, recycling and composting of bio-based building components.
Book: Sustainability in Energy and Buildings 2021
Pages: 89 - 100
ISBN:978-981-16-6268-3
Publication year:2022