Abstract
In addition to the environmental burden of its construction and demolition activities, the Flemish housing market faces a structural affordability challenge. As one possible answer, this research explores the potential of so-called expandable houses, being built increasingly often. Through specific design choices that enable the disassembly and future reuse of individual components and so align with the idea of a circular economy, expandable houses promise to provide ever-changing homes with a smaller impact on the environment and at a lower cost for clients. In this paper, an expandable house suitable for various housing needs is conceived through a scenario-based research-by-design approach and compared to a reference house for Flanders. Subsequently, for both houses the life cycle costs are calculated and compared. The results of this exploration support the proposition that designing expandable houses can be a catalyst for sustainable, circular housing development and that households could benefit from its social, economic and ecological qualities. It requires, however, a dynamic perspective on evaluating their life-cycle impact.
Highlights
The objective of this study is to explore the potential of such expandable houses in terms of life cycle costs while reflecting about the suitable methods to evaluate these hypotheses
The initial costs are calculated and compared. This shows a clear difference between the initial cost of the expandable houses, i.e., the core houses, and the conventional house (Table 3)
Building the core of the expandable house is more cost-efficient than the conventional design alternative; it is 39.5% lower when both are built with conventional materials
Summary
The housing market in the Belgian region Flanders faces various challenges. In the context of the demographic trends, where the urban population is growing and accelerating [1,2], the number of people seeking a home and the demand for housing keeps increasing. The average household size is shrinking [3] because of family dilution and ageing, and the demand for global construction is expected to increase by 70%. Over the few years [4]. This observation rings alarm bells in terms of environmental impact. In Flanders, the construction sector is the largest consumer of raw materials and accounts for over 35% of the total waste generation [2,5,6,7]
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