Challenge
The built environment significantly impacts climate change, contributing nearly 40% of global CO2 emissions and 36% of European waste. This presents a triple challenge: wasted energy in production and demolition, finite resource use, and transport-related emissions. To achieve community resilience, we must revolutionise how we build and transform cities, addressing not just energy efficiency but entire production processes.
A green and resilient urban transition is crucial, but complex due to changing dynamics and multifaceted connections with society, economy and culture. Circularity principles offer innovative pathways for reimagining the built environment, particularly in architecture, urban design, and product,/service design. These sectors are vital for transforming the broader construction industry and fostering sustainable lifestyles.
The shift towards a circular economy in design and architecture requires more than just new business models; it demands a systemic change in these sectors and a broader urban transition to sustainability.
Approach
The Alliance, driven by a mission to develop innovation in circular design education, will foster entrepreneurship in academia. With an accelerator and continuing education programmes, we aim to up skill in emerging labour market profiles and enable the creation of green start-ups. The training and accelerator will focus on the following:
- Urban design sector: Urban circular innovation system, including new forms of engagement and sharing in community infrastructures for materials, energy, and knowledge, innovating the use of natural resources for construction linked to proximity and regional economies.
- Architectural design sector: Bio-based facade systems and materials in overall circular building design schemes, considering buildings as bio-machines.
- Product and service design sector: New tools for green living, using waste from other fields of bio-economy.
Materiom will play a key role in providing support to academic partners in developing content related to circularity thinking, multiple use cycles and recovery, bio-based materials and manufacturing, and circular business models. This collaboration, along with the other partners and observatories, will ensure the highest quality and relevance of the educational materials.
Outcomes
The CiD launched in September 2023 and will run until August 2026. To date, Materiom has joined knowledge exchange workshops in Hannover, Genoa and Barcelona to co-develop CiD’s educational and accelerator programmes. Resulting outcomes will be shared here as the project progresses.
Funders
Consortium Partners
- Leibniz University Hannover
- Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC)
- University of Genoa (UniGe)
- ARCES
- ERSILIA Foundation
- Architekturos Fondas
- Architects’ Council of Europe
- European Association for Local Democracy
- Tallinn Business Incubators
- National Research Council of Italy
- Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Observatory Partners can be found here.
Learn more
To dive deeper into CiD please visit the alliance website and follow recent updates on LinkedIn!
