Resource management and circularity

Accountability for resources

Construction waste accounts for half of the solid waste generated annually worldwide. This equates to over a billion tons each year, a number that is expected to double by 2050. If we are to create significant impact in our resource intensive industry, actively seeking ways of challenging existing linear economic models is key.

At its core, circularity is about ensuring the longevity of the resources we have. From designing for disassembly and upcycling existing materials, to prioritizing transformations, retrofits, and renovations – rethinking resource management is both a shift in mindset and an important departure from business-as-usual.

If we are to create significant impact in our resource intensive industry, actively seeking ways of challenging existing linear economic models is key.

Fritz Hansen Pavilion

Designing for disassembly

Designers might not like hearing it, but architecture is not forever. Built projects have an end of life at which point their components and materials are disposed of, most often ending up in landfills. Construction waste currently accounts for half of the world’s solid waste, 90% of which comes from demolition.

Accepting these alarming numbers and designing proactively and practically to change them, we’re embracing the challenge of mindful disassembly as a design driver. This means ensuring that building components can be reused and have a healthy second life.

Designing the Fritz Hansen Pavilion back in 2022, demanded that we embrace the temporality of the pavilion typology, and mindfully ensure that each component could be repurposed, leaving no traces in its previous site, and no waste in the process. In line with circular design principles, the pavilion’s entire structure, which is comprised of low-carbon materials, is designed to be disassembled and reused in Fritz Hansen’s headquarters in the future.

Laura Stamer, 2022

Rummel Restaurant

A constant state of becoming

Embraced as a key driver, design for disassembly was central to our design of the small but striking Mitokondrien, a 500m2 restaurant nestled in the streets of Stockholm. With a burnt wood exterior and glulam frames, the timber structure is designed as a double frame structure, with changing angles and heights from one end of the building to the other.

Disassembly becomes part of the aesthetic language of Mitokondrien in that the way parts are mounted and bolted together is visible, making it easy to understand how the building is constructed. In turn, this also makes them easy to dismantle, inspect, remove, or replace when necessary, without cutting through the cladding.

In this way, the temporality of the building components is accounted for and incorporated into the design. Mitokondrien’s design for disassembly enables flexible usages and a prolonged life cycle of its parts; all the while conveying that everything – including our built environment – is in a constant state of becoming.

With a burnt wood exterior and glulam frames, the timber construction is designed as a double frame structure, with changing angles and heights, dropping from 10 to four meters from on end of the building to the other. Emil Fagander, 2023

News and knowledge

Building in straw

Straw is the agricultural byproduct of harvesting cereal crops and makes up about half of their yield. Despite its abundance, however, much of it is usually abandoned or burned. In Europe alone, over 150 million tonnes of wheat straw go to waste each year.

Like other bio-based materials, straw has a part in our planet’s natural carbon cycle, absorbing and storing CO2 throughout its lifetime and releasing it in decay. Using straw as a building material means prolonging the storage phase of this cycle, while offering a viable waste management solution and a great alternative to producing new materials.

Adapted to meet today’s needs and requirements, straw bale construction is a viable alternative to conventional practice and a scalable means of adopting circularity.

Rasmus Hjortshoj, 2023

Ponte Roma Quartier

Preserving heritage by means of circularity

Prioritizing adaptive reuse, urban mining, and timber construction, our proposed design will transform Bolzano’s post-industrial area into ‘Ponte Roma Quartier’, an inviting, multi-generational, mixed-use neighborhood with a solution to the city’s housing crisis.

Two expansive open-concept industrial buildings will be transformed into public spaces featuring cafes, shops, eateries, common areas, and a climbing gym. Nearby buildings will be resourcefully repurposed, reclaimed materials like bricks and cobblestones will find new life as flooring, while robust beams will be crafted into urban farming greenhouses. Other materials, including metal, will be reimagined as porches, terraces, and decorative accents.

The design of Ponte Roma Quartier provided an exciting opportunity for ’urban mining’- a practice of recovering and reusing existing materials on site - quite literally mining anything that could offer itself to the area’s second life.

Open spaces like courtyards and rooftops will be designed for maximum exposure to sunlight and accessibility, and both will offer recreational spaces for relaxation and panoramic viewpoints.

News and knowledge

Can imperfect solutions pave the way to a renewable future?

Traditional construction practices are centered around mass production and rely heavily on concrete and steel. Such material choices evidence considerations relating to ‘cheapest’, ‘fastest’, and ‘easiest’ solutions - bearing a heavy toll on our planet.

In the search for alternatives to these methods and materials, additive manufacturing and 3D printing have the potential to revolutionize the way we design and build. Katie Heywood, one of our industrial Ph.D. candidates, is actively making space for novel insights, adaptable methodologies, and potentials within these fields.

Among some of the most exciting aspects of 3D printing is the potential to significantly reduce the amount of materials required, only printing what is structurally necessary.

This 3D-printed slab developed by Katie, reimagines the structural element as a hybrid of timber and concrete. Utilizing new digital fabrication methods and computational form finding, it creates a 3D concrete printed vault.

Katie’s 3D printed slab is designed as an exploratory track stemming from our N3XTCON project of 3D printed rowhouses.

Uppsala Town Hall

New life in old square meters

Like any project, a transformation demands a deep dive into context in order to unravel the geographical and cultural conditions of the site. In addition, however, it also calls for an exploration into the work of others, investigating the past through the built.

The transformation of Uppsala Town Hall embodies this spirit proudly. The project extends the existing architecture, that is the half-completed late modernist design of the brothers Erik and Tore Ahlsén.

The unrealized plan meant that Uppsala City Hall never managed to accommodate all the needs of all the municipal departments and offices. Now open to the public, the building carries the legacy of the old but boasts 14,000 new m² to finally house all of the municipality’s activities under one roof.

An deep-dive into the building of the Ahlsen brother’s unfinished building from the 1960’s sparked the idea of using the Japanese art of mending pottery with gold, known as kintsugi, as inspiration for joining the existing building with a new one. However, instead of using gold, the team chose submarine glass. Einer Aslaksen, 2022

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