The experimental project ‘Circular Retrofit Lab (CRL)’ is built against a backdrop of the student modules situated at the heart of the university campus of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium. It concerns the transformation of eight existing student housing modules out of 350 modules built in the sixties to support the day-to-day functioning of the university. Although the student housing units have comfort levels that are well below current standards most of them have been inhabited by students until today. The configuration of the modules was never altered since it proved to be adjustable to changing needs of students of different time generations.
Today, the university campus is undergoing a metamorphosis in which about 250 of the student modules will be converted into non-residential functions. The campus is still facing many future uncertainties and therefore, changing use, functionality and performance need to be anticipated during the modules’ reconversion. The flexibility of the modular construction system, consisting of stacked three-dimensional concrete frames, supports the integration of new building functions. In this context, the Circular Retrofit Lab is conceived as a circular renovation experiment catalytic for the full renovation of the campus. This living lab aims to demonstrate how open and circular building design boosts long-term opportunities for existing buildings, both for future reconfiguration as for material and waste efficiency from a life cycle perspective. During the reconversion, the buildings are conceptualized and materialized as ‘material banks’ for the future.
This paper discusses the re-design process of the CRL according to open and transformable building principles and the influence of those involved in creating this new living lab: the building owner, architects, builders, product manufacturers, contractors and urban planning authorities. First, the focus is on a generic re-design for multiple future usage on the basis of research-by-design. Different design scenarios are developed using the spatial opportunities of the modular construction system. Thereby, the existing modules are given more functional flexibility by centralizing services and reorganizing the circulation. Secondly, during the design process, several constraining boundary conditions for a circular building design were encountered (e.g. exoskeleton, urban development rules, heritage value). Their identification led to a renovation strategy that implements circular building solutions fitting to the buildings’ specific context.
Finally, at infill level, innovative adaptable and reusable building solutions have been developed in collaboration with industrial stakeholders leading to prototypes of new circular building solutions. In order to reclaim the materials added during the renovation in the future, the implementation of transformable building design principles - characterized by reversible connection techniques and durable materials – plays a crucial role.
This paper shows how various actors and design options increase the complexity of circular (re-)design, but also how they can positively influence the reactivation of existing buildings into open and circular ones for the future. The case demonstrates that the repetitive estate layout of the student modules forms a great opportunity to implement more open and flexible plan layouts towards a more circular building stock and provides important lessons for future circular building approaches.
Lessons learnt from practical projects , New products, applications and machinery , Development of design and modelling methods
