ABOUT THE PROJECT
WHAT IS CIRCUIT?
Circular Construction in Regenerative Cities (CIRCuIT) was a collaborative project that ran from 2019-2023 and involved 31 ambitious partners across the built environment chain in Copenhagen, Hamburg, the Helsinki region and Greater London.
Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, the project supported the creation of regenerative cities by implementing sustainable and circular construction practices.
Discover the project's key findings, results and recommendations in this report.
OUR OBJECTIVES
Prior to CIRCuIT, many techniques, tools and approaches related to circular construction had previously been developed and tested around Europe, but circular techniques weren't being demonstrated effectively at a city or regional level - CIRCuIT aimed to change that.
CIRCuIT worked to bridge the gap between theory, practice and policy by delivering a series of demonstrations, case studies, events and other dissemination activities that showcased how circular construction approaches could be scaled and replicated across Europe to enable cities to build more sustainably and transition to a circular built environment.
CIRCuIT's objective was to demonstrate how cities can scale and replicate these activities and transition their construction sector to a circular economy.
Discover the key insights from CIRCuIT.
OUR ACTIVITIES
Each city delivered nine demonstrations exploring three innovative interventions:
-
Urban mining and reverse cycles - the reuse and recycling of materials
-
Extending building life through transformation and refurbishment
-
Designing for disassembly and flexible construction to make reuse, recycling, transformation and refurbishment easier
The project set up knowledge and skills sharing to support cities in implementing circular construction solutions and initiate changes at system level through:
-
Developing recommendations, tools and resources, including urban planning instruments, public procurement criteria and roadmaps
-
Establishing a Circularity Hub - a suite of digital platforms including a data atlas, dashboard, citizen engagement portal, materials exchange platform and wiki
-
A knowledge sharing structure to disseminate project experience, knowledge and practices to cities and the construction industry which will include providing training and establishing networks across Europe.
CIRCuIT helped provide a consistent and comprehensive approach to data collection, analysis and management including through:
-
Developing a concise and robust list of indicators to provide an overview of circularity at city level
-
Creating a material stocks and flow database