Wood(s): Imagining How a Materials Bank can Catalyse Circular Timber Flows in Leuven, Belgium

Abstract

This paper constructs an alternative history of wood in Leuven (Belgium) to help contextualize the city’s contemporary project for a building materials bank as part of their larger efforts to make the urban metabolism more circular. Focusing on the history of Leuven’s forests, canal, and deconstruction practices, this paper aims to show how the materials bank will also intervene into the larger overlapping timber flows of the region. By analysing how (circular) wood flows were strongly intertwined with urban and landscape development projects in pre-industrial Leuven, the paper speculates on how the materials bank could revitalize broken spatial connections towards more circular timber flows in Leuven, while catalysing circular urban landscape and infrastructure development. It shifts focus from a materials bank as a circular waste management response “redirecting” wood waste flows to an integrated infrastructural question addressing path dependencies in the wood extraction, processing, consumption and disposal chain.