The development of an evaluation method to support circular building design
Due to the COVID-19 crisis the PhD defence of Pieter Beurskens will take place (partly) online.
The PhD defence can be followed by a live stream.
Pieter Beurskens is a PhD student in the department of Design Production & Management (DPM). His supervisors are prof.dr.ir. J.I.M. Halman and prof.dr.ir. L.A.M. van Dongen from the Faculty Engineering Technology (ET).
The conventional way of construction has become a burden to the dynamic society of the 21st century. Buildings are not designed to be easily transformed to meet changing requirements, instead they are designed as static rigid entities that cannot be modified without demolition. Buildings are commonly designed with a disregard to the end-of-first-life, leading to the loss of almost all applied energy and labour and materials at the end-of-life, contributing greatly to the generation of waste.
In this thesis the enormous amounts of construction and demolition waste is considered the physical evidence of an industry that contains a fundamental error in its design and its sequential resource utilisation. To transform the construction industry into a sustainable and resilient industry that is resource responsible, buildings should be seen as temporary depositories of valuable building products that maintain their value after first, second and further use. Thereby, creating a circular model of material use instead of a linear model of material consumption. Therefore, the design of buildings, building systems and building products with a high potential to be reused is considered a necessity to move towards a construction industry that, (1) creates building products with increased resource productivity; (2) is less dependent on virgin resources and; (3) contributes to the elimination of the concept of waste.
The aim of this research is to support the transition from the current linear ‘take-make-dispose’ pattern to a so-called circular construction industry, an industry that is based on the principles of a circular economy. To achieve this goal it is considered essential to understand how the reuse potential of buildings can be increased. Therefore, the goals of this research is the development of an assessment method to evaluate the reuse potential of buildings and building products. The aim of this method is to supports designers in making informed design-decisions to increase the reuse potential of buildings and building products. Furthermore, the establishment of such a reuse potential assessment method enables decision makers to set reuse potential targets to enhance the transition towards a circular construction industry.
