Labland encourages the construction of future-oriented homes that improve the quality of life while reducing the environmental impact. Circular construction in an urban environment is a crucial lever for this. The benefits of the circular economy and high-density housing for the environment have been demonstrated several times in recent years, so Labland continues to focus on circular and urban construction. With this project we want to go one step further and demonstrate how change-oriented and circular construction also improves the quality of life.

VUB Architectural Engineering acts as a research consultant in this Open Call project supported by Circular Flanders. Check all Open Call projects on our news feed, leave a note and join us.

A building system is more than just its technical functioning, it also covers all those aspects that are necessary to effectively realize the “living” function. Therefore, the partners of this project will:

• measure the real quality of life to create the optimal context for circular construction,
• set up a sustainable cooperative  management model for circular building elements,
• create dwelling whose layout can change in the future based on circular design principles,
• make use of change-oriented building techniques so that elements keep their value,
• design circular building elements according to the Open Sturctures method,
• recovering materials and upgrading them to reusable building components,
• build a demo home that will serve as a first materialization for the design research.

Combining this knowledge will lead to an Open Source Building System of cooperatively managed circular building elements for better liveable homes.