Deconstruction, preparation for reuse and reuse of salvaged materials on a pilot construction site in Brussels

Since a few years, the construction sector is focusing on minimizing resources exploitation and waste arising on construction sites. The European Commission has highlighted prevention and reuse as key actions for waste management. The Brussels Capital-Region is a densely built region, generating more than 600 000 tons of C&D waste each year....

The CE Meter: An instrument to assess the circular economy capacity of buildings

A direct connection can be made between adaptive building and sustainability (Wilkinson 2011). Market developments show increased demands by for flexibility and sustainability by users and owners as well as a growing understanding of the importance of a circular economy (Eichholtz 2009). Circular Economy (CE) is a rather recent way of looking at...

New business model of flexible housing

The Open Building (OB) and the concept of flexible housing has alwaysassociated with user’s ability to respond to changing demand. It is necessary that housing can adap to changing market conditions and different users’ requirements. Flexibility makes a crucial concept that one cannot ignore. However, extra investments for future flexibility are...

A product design framework for a circular economy

The paper provides a circular economy framework from a product design perspective with tools to aid product designers in applying circular product design in practice. Design research for circular economy has so far mainly been limited to referring to existing fields of research such as design for disassembly, remanufacturing and recycling. The...

Beyond (eco)design: Current approaches to sustainable packaging design

Packaging has always received a lot of attention within the field of design for sustainability. The classical approach has been to mainly focus on reducing the impact of the packaging. This approach stems from the ill-informed position that packaging is superfluous, or at best there only for marketing reasons. This is a rather guild-based...

Amsterdam as a Sustainable European Metropolis: Integration of Water, Energy and Material Flows

Amsterdam has the ambition to develop as a competitive and sustainable European metropolis. The flows of energy, water and resources within the urban environment have a large potential to contribute to this ambition. The overall mass balances of phosphate, food, water, energy and material imports in the Amsterdam region have already been mapped....