Cities as ever-changing environments

Written by Adrian Petkov, Architectural Assistant at Fluid

Credit: Penda designs modular wooden ‘village’ for Beijing Horticultural Expo.

The cities we live in constantly expand and house nearly 55% of Earth’s population, which is predicted to increase to 68% by 2050. To do so, buildings are being erected and old ones demolished, which leaves an abundance of materials, producing a third of the UK’s total waste and generating 45% of all CO2 emissions. In a world where reaching a circular economy is crucial, the built environment has the potential to adopt its principles and practices and achieve that goal.

Buildings around us are narrated by past users and programmes which, once outdated, become either demolished or abandoned. The circular economy offers an alternative model in which the usefulness of products, materials and resources is maximised, and waste is reduced or even eliminated. Walter R. Stahel associates the application of the circular economy as sustainable when it affects all aspects of construction: the structure, its components (materials) and the time taken for production. The professor also promotes deconstruction practices (rather than demolition) where the value of the manufactured capital is preserved. Stahel asserts that buildings are a stock of strategic resource bases for future use.

Upholding Walter R. Stahel’s interpretation of the built environment and its value as a stock for subsequent use, Thomas Rau, a Dutch architect, identifies buildings as material deposits and developed a database of resources in current construction which stores their value for potential reuse. He believes such a catalogue would change the idea of waste by giving materials identity. At the core of Rau’s concept is analysing the building and its parts as a temporary service rather than a finished product and organising them in a material passport.

Credit: Penda designs modular wooden ‘village’ for Beijing Horticultural Expo.

This new imaginative urban environment would be easily assembled and dismantled according to the user’s intention and needs. Kok Keong Tew and Linshou Wang delve into the possibility of creating an adaptive skyscraper that changes shapes, like LEGO pieces. The Adaptable Tower consists of a steel frame structure with slots suited for shipping containers. Its design allows the building to adapt over time in function and space (even height), which offers growing families a way to simply enlarge their homes. Based in Rotterdam, the Adaptable Tower makes use of its nearby immense port, from where it sources its modular elements. The usage of local resources and materials supports the circular economy principles and makes the projects more sustainable.

Architecture studio Penda took the idea of constructing modular on a larger scale. Their wooden village concept for the Beijing Horticultural Expo is inspired by a Chinese measuring system and is totally adaptable to accommodate future use. Even though it is an exhibition space, the modular construction offers a village-like experience, allowing users to explore on their own behalf. It is designed in cross-laminated timber prefabricated units, which makes its construction extremely efficient and cost-effective. Chris Precht and Dayong Sun, Penda’s architects, described the construction as a network of small-scale units. They stressed the importance of designing in a modular and flexible way to allow future reuse of structures, components and space. It is a sustainable ideology we need to adopt not only to manage our resources and constructions, but also our cities.

Our diverse construction demand obliges us to investigate the application of circular economy principles, which are about optimising the utilisation of manufactured objects. The industry is the biggest consumer of material resources and producer of waste, so reusing is a key practice for a successful transition. Increasing the value of a building’s materials, structure, function and space is a necessity towards sustainability and a city which is in a constant loop of usage