Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BAMB (Buildings as Material Banks: Integrating Materials Passports with Reversible Building Design to Optimise Circular Industrial Value Chains)

Teaser

The BAMB – Buildings as Material Banks- project brings 15 parties throughout Europe together for one mission –enabling a systemic shift in the building sector by creating circular solutions.Today, building materials end up as waste when no longer needed. To avoid...

Summary

The BAMB – Buildings as Material Banks- project brings 15 parties throughout Europe together for one mission –enabling a systemic shift in the building sector by creating circular solutions.

Today, building materials end up as waste when no longer needed. To avoid destroying ecosystems, increasing environmental costs and creating risks of resource scarcity the building industry needs to move towards a circular economy – and BAMB will provide the tools.

Usually, worthless materials become waste, while valuable materials are reused. BAMB is creating ways to increase the values of building materials. Dynamically and flexibly designed buildings can be incorporated into a circular economy – where materials in buildings sustain their value. Instead of being to-be waste, buildings function as banks of valuable materials – slowing down the usage of resources to a rate that meets the capacity of the planet.

Work performed

Guiding BAMB, the current system of the construction value chain has been investigated by identifying barriers and opportunities for Materials Passports and Reversible Building Design, summarizing them in a State-of-the-art report. This has been a significant step towards a shared vision and blueprint for a future system configuration for a circular building sector. The blueprint and the State-of-the-art report will be further refined and developed during the project.

One of the key concepts fuelling the future vision is that of Materials Passports. These are digital sets of data describing defined characteristics of materials and components in products and systems that give them value for present use, recovery, and reuse. Working towards functional Materials Passports and an operational Materials Passports Platform (MPP), a Proof of Concept for the software platform has been developed, and great progress achieved towards developing the Materials Passports Framework. The development of the MPP is to be tested with digital data sets from real scale projects, including BAMB pilots.

The second pillar of BAMB is Reversible Building Design. The aim is to develop strategies, design tools and guidelines for the design of dynamic and flexible buildings, and the assessment of the resulting waste reduction potential in both new and existing construction. Reversible design permits structures to be transformed, disassembled and broken down to the set of initial elements, to be re-used to produce new components and buildings or to upgrade existing structures. At the core of this design approach are: transformation capacity - the ability to transform building spaces to meet new requirements; and re-use potential – the ability to reuse elements and components. Based on research and design studios, much progress has been made developing a Re-Use Potential Tool, a

Transformation Capacity Tool, and a Design Protocol for Dynamic & Circular Building. Developments are being tested in the BAMB pilot project amongst others.

To bridge the gap between concepts and practice, BAMB aims to investigate new design, manufacturing, construction and maintenance approaches for dynamic and circular buildings through 6 real scale construction and refurbishment projects: Green Transformable Building Lab (NL); Reversible Experience Modules (REM) (different locations); Green Design Centre Building (B&H); Refurbishment Lab (BE), Build Reversible in Conception (B.R.I.C.) (BE); New Office Architecture (DE). All pilots have begun work on a feasibility study on the objectives of Material Passports and Reversible Building Design, analysing construction, financial and other aspects.

To facilitate the future applications and exploitation of BAMB results, a Building Level Integrated Decision Making Model and a BIM Resource Productivity Prototype are being created, integrating input from other project developments on materials recovery/re-use and re-use and transformation tools. Having such information available at key stages of a building’s life (design, product selection, procurement, operation, maintenance, refurbishment, deconstruction), will enable better decisions to be made ensuring the value of buildings, and their constituent parts are enhanced, rather than deteriorating. Based on the analysis of existing tools and solutions, identifying strengths and weaknesses, a roadmap for the development/testing of a BAMB building level assessment methodology has been drafted. Work is currently underway on defining ‘baseline assessment and modelling’ against which ‘BAMB assessment and modelling’ can be developed and evaluated comprising environmental impact assessment and life cycle costing.

To ensure uptake of BAMB outputs, new business models based on reverse logistics and circular value chains in buildings are being developed. An industry value network analysis has been carried out, based on which the different business needs and opportunities have been ide

Final results

As described in more detail above, Materials Passports, and Reversible Building Design tools are being developed beyond the state-of-the-art. Setting the BAMB project apart from other initiatives in this field, are the focus on preventing waste and reducing the use of virgin resources from the early stages of the building life-cycle and the fact that these concepts are brought together through Building Information Modeling (BIM), and all outputs’ implementation is supported by the development of business models, policy recommendations, and a plan for exploitation enabling a systemic approach. A particular strength of the BAMB project is the place given to the input and needs of the actors within the building industry and policymakers, engaging these stakeholders in the process of output development.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.bamb2020.eu/.