Circular Facade Systems

Circular Facade Systems: For Sustainable Building Renovations

Chauhan, Pragya (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Konstantinou, T. (mentor)
Boerstra, A.C. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Building Technology | Sustainable Design

2022-06-16

The building industry accounts for almost 40% of the total carbon emissions that are directly responsible for climate change. So far, we have been following a linear economy model which follows a concept of “take-make-use-dispose” and causes a significantly large burden on the natural environment. For this reason, transition to a circular economy is important in order to keep the resources in the economy for as long as possible, and thus reduce this burden. With a rising building stock reaching its end of life, the number of renovations in the coming years will increase significantly. They are expected to reach 35 million in 2030. The main focus of these renovations will be to make buildings energy efficient. While we have been successful in reducing the operational carbon of buildings, there is still scope to reduce the embodied carbon. This is also the main motivator for circularity goals.

It is estimated that the façade may account for between 13 and 17% of the total embodied carbon associated with a building. There is however not a strategic process to designing a circular facade. The methodology followed is the research-through-design methodology.

This project develops a design framework through studying existing literature, taking into account existing examples and pilot research projects - Circl Pavilion, CRL. The process uses the 10R strategy - particularly the cases of Reclaim, Recycle, Reuse, Reduce. This is then applied to the case of Building 22 at the TU Delft campus, and 4 options are developed. The evaluation through a life cycle assessment and building circularity approach is conducted on the platform OneClickLCA. It was found that for a circular design, material selection is very important. Overall materials with a lower embodied carbon should be selected. Moreover, materials with a higher volume of reused content should be prioritized first and a higher volume of bio-based content should be prioritized second. There is also a need to document and create more technical information for circular materials.

Renovation
Facades
Circularity
Circular strategies
Design process

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:1695baa2-7027-4520-b4ce-7856ee2b310f

Student theses

master thesis

© 2022 Pragya Chauhan