Circular Facade Design for Various End-of-Life scenarios

Abstract

The linear economy of Take-Make-Dispose creates environmental pollution, increases the cost of raw materials, increases waste and creates CO2 emissions. The new Circular Economy Action Plan aims to design products that prevent waste and retain resources in the EU economy. The building and construction industry contributes to 35% of the total waste produced globally. Facades are complex multilayered system with lifespan shorter than the structure. A façade system reaches its end of technical life often compared to the structure. Effective End-of-Life management of a façade can enable material recovery, recycling and reuse. The environmental impacts play an important role in the End-of-Life decision making of a system followed by the material costs. Design aids like MFA and LCA act as the evaluative design aids to access circularity based on the environmental impacts. But these evaluative design aids are time-consuming. Thus, the generative design aids that are based on the evaluative design aids can guide the façade designers in designing a façade system which is circular at the End-of-Life. The project derives guidelines for a circular End-of-Life design of a façade system. The project employs a mixed methodology consisting of literature research and research through design process. Several design variants with different End-of-Life scenarios were designed and evaluated for environmental impacts and market-based material and installation costs. Results indicated that reuse scenarios had the least environmental impacts, but the reuse scenario was governed by the lifespan of the materials in the system. The market-based material and installation costs of the materials were found to be high for long-lifespan materials compared to the short lifespan materials. For the bio-based variants, it was found that despite having lower global warming potential impacts at the manufacturing stage, in most of the cases, the materials are downgraded at the End-of-Life. The environmental impacts and costs were compared to form the design guidelines for façade designers to take decisions at the preliminary design stage. Further, the guidelines are translated information considerations based on the tipping points identified after analysing the results. The guidelines and the information considerations are further validated by designing a façade system based on the variants.