LIFE CYCLE THINKING FOR BUILDINGS: DESIGN PROCESS VALUE FOR CIRCULARITY

Abstract

In the construction sector, the significant environmental impact involves a change of paradigm in the design process and building production, towards circular construction with the reduction of waste, prefabrication and industrialisation.

The ordinary production of buildings is characterized by an approach that limits innovative ways, compared to traditional construction processes and methods. While making use of cutting-edge components and manufacturers open to innovation in terms of circularity and carbon neutrality in its production interior, this sector struggles to find innovative paths for the production and ordinary redevelopment of buildings. An example is given by the traditional wet construction methods: a technology far from the logic of reduction, reuse, recycling and control of resources used at the time of construction, reuse and management throughout the life of a building.

In this perspective, European policies for the energy transition of the building stock (such as the Renovation Wave and the Green Deal) allow us to imagine strategies applying industrialized models and operating processes, for a concrete satisfaction of collective environmental needs.

This contribution investigates the construction methods of building assets, which must modify their paradigms towards high qualitative impacts, applying industrialized models and processes, and encouraging interactions and synergies with sectors also external to that of construction. Building innovation passes through techniques and, above all, processes (understood in the entirety of the development of the work of architecture, especially in its construction phases) that are coherent in their development and are transferable on a large scale, in order to affect the mass of current production.

Starting from the ecological transition, research should invest, together with the innovation of products and techniques, in innovation in the cultural approach so that “extraordinary" techniques and products can be accepted by the market, demonstrating how the synergy between systems and management can bring a high added value for a sustainable quality of living.

Technological innovation, in fact, is activated only if technical innovation is combined with new strategies and new approaches in organization, marketing and after-sales management. Through case studies and data from the scientific literature, this contribution proposes perspectives of innovation capable of overcoming design and decision-making obstacles to industrialized systems.

It is identified in the design process and in the tightening methods of industrialized and pre-assembled products (rather than individual products), a preferential way to enhance buildings in the re-generation phases, through circular strategies and processes. This approach can reintroduce most components into the production cycle, once their use in a given building has ended. Secondly, pre-assembly and a certain type of industrialization can add value and quality of use to buildings, improving their performance and extending their useful life.

Thirdly, the technological process has immediate repercussions on the practical/implementation choices for the designer, the economic operator and the end user, bypassing the strictly economic aspect but as claimed by Latur, with a transition that makes the ecological aspect "material" compared to the "virtual" economic dimension.