Circular Practices in Construction

Abstract

The construction sector creates exorbitant amounts of emissions and waste. Adressing a livable future, we argue for a radical shift in the way we think, design, and use buildings. Therefore, we present findings of our ongoing research project Circular Material Systems (CMS) that contributes to an understanding of buildings as circular systems that produce reusable components or biodegradable materials by practices operating across a building’s lifecycle. The main question of this paper is: How to translate the Circular Economy (CE) concept for construction? The findings are based on in-depth case studies of 25 buildings across Europe. We use the notion of ‘practices’ to both enrich the academic debate on circular construction and create a best-practice collection for practitioners. The proposed framework includes strategies and practices that address the construction sector’s urgent need to reduce its environmental impact. We connected these strategies to the 9R framework to illustrate the harmonisation with the CE concept. What we found particularly interesting is that there are repeating patterns of practices applied in the analysed buildings while working with local materials, knowing and redesigning supply chains as well as collaboration models to involve a wide variety of necessary actors are characteristic practices for achieving circularity. To advance the paradigm of circular construction, every stakeholder in the building process is required to look beyond their responsibilities to find new innovative solutions for circularity while further research should focus on implementation pathways as well as legal and enabling factors.