Circular material for circular cities

Abstract

Circular construction is pivotal for urban future-making as it minimizes waste, optimizes resource use, and fosters environmentally sustainable practices, contributing to the creation of resilient and regenerative cities.

This lecture is based on the results of the EU-funded Circular Construction in Regenerative Cities (CIRCuIT) project. It presents the key findings, tools, methodologies, and recommendations generated by the CIRCuIT project from 2019 to 2023 across the cities of Copenhagen, Hamburg, London, and the Vantaa/Helsinki region.

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.

About the lecturer

Kerstin Kuchta is the director of the Circular Resource Engineering and Management research institute and has been a full professor at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) since 2010. She received her Diplom in environmental engineering at the Berlin University of Technology and started her career as a researcher at Darmstadt University of Technology. Her PhD was in the field of recovery and utilization of incinerator bottom ashes. From 2002 to 2010 she was a full professor for energy and environmental management at Hamburg University of Applied Science (HAW) and founding dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the German-Kazakh University (DKU) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In 2011 she came to the Hamburg University of Technology to establish the new research field of waste resources. Her major research interests are the circular economy of polymers, rare earth elements, and critical metals, and the bioeconomy in circular cities.

More information
https://www.circuit-project.eu