The project addresses the mass demolition and reconstruction of post-war housing complexes in the Netherlands. It’s relevance is based on the negative ecological impact embedded within the production of building material, the waste production of demolition and the neglect of architectural heritage in common renewal practice.

It proposes an alternative method of solving the need for renewal in most post-war housing complexes through a radically circular transformation strategy. This strategy is based on three steps: preserve, reuse, reclaim. A porch flat ensemble in the area of Geuzenveld, Amsterdam Nieuw-West, is used as the design case.

A research was conducted in preparation of the design. It’s main research question: “how can renovation with reclaimed materials become a feasible alternative to reconstruction of the current housing stock?”. From this research, the application of reclaimed insulation and finishing material, was indicated to be highly effective strategies of mitigating the ecological impact of a renovation task. These findings have been incorporated into the design.

The project resulted in a transformation design of the porch flat ensemble that saves 1.808.751 kg CO2-eq and 26.122.919 MJ of energy in terms of material use, relative to a conventional reconstruction design.