Developing regenerate: A circular economy engagement tool for the assessment of new and existing buildings
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2023

The transition toward a circular economy (CE) is key in decarbonizing the built environment. Despite this, knowledge of—and engagement with—CE philosophies remains limited within the construction industry. Discussion with practitioners reveals this to be contributed to by a lack of clarity regarding CE principles, with numerous organizations recommending implementation of differing and sometimes conflicting principles. In addition, a systematic assessment of how building designs consider CE is made difficult by the multiple design areas required to be considered and the large amount of design data required to do so. The absence of a systematic CE assessment causes a lack of comparability across designs, preventing benchmarking of CE practices in building design at present. This paper details the development of Regenerate, a CE engagement tool for the assessment of new and existing buildings, established in an effort to overcome the aforementioned barriers to the adoption of CE within the construction sector. A CE design workflow for the built environment is proposed, comprising four overarching circularity principles (Design for Adaptability; Design for Deconstructability; Circular Material Selection; Resource Efficiency) and contributing design actions. In addition to engaging stakeholders by enabling the assessment of building designs, the tool retrieves key data for further research. Information on completed design actions as well as recycling and waste metrics is collected to facilitate future CE benchmarking. “Bill of materials” data (i.e., material quantities) is also compiled, with this being key in material stock modeling research and embodied carbon benchmarking.

built environment

construction

design tool

reuse

adaptability

circular economy

Författare

Charles Gillott

University of Sheffield

Will Mihkelson

University of Sheffield

Maud Lanau

Chalmers, Arkitektur och samhällsbyggnadsteknik, Byggnadsteknologi

University of Sheffield

Dave Cheshire

AECOM Technology Corporation, United Kingdom

Danielle Densley Tingley

University of Sheffield

Journal of Industrial Ecology

1088-1980 (ISSN) 1530-9290 (eISSN)

Vol. 27 2 423-435

Ämneskategorier

Arkitekturteknik

Design

Byggproduktion

DOI

10.1111/jiec.13377

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2024-03-07