Houseful : Advance a Building’s Circularity

Vienna, Austria Construction and Development, Environment and Resource efficiency, Relations to stakeholders

“Advance the building’s circularity by offering methodologies for stakeholder engagement and co-creation of innovative solutions on materials, waste and energy resources.”

Description

This demonstration project is part of the HOUSEFUL project (funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme), which targets the uptake of circular buildings in the housing sector.

HOUSEFUL will pursue its objectives by designing innovative interventions for efficient management of materials, waste, water and energy along the entire housing value chain. This will be done by demonstrating the feasibility of an integrated systemic service composed of 11 circular solutions, which will be demonstrated in four different buildings including this existing building in Vienna (Austria). It is a residential building consisting of 54 apartments, one day care center and one supervised flat-sharing community for young people.

Context

The building is located in the 21st district of Vienna (“Floridsdorf”) and, from a technical point of view, it is comparable to approximately 70% of residential buildings in Austria. Therefore, it is an interesting role model for replication and dissemination activities in HOUSEFUL.

HOUSEFUL will provide an advance in this building’s circularity by offering solutions for their calculation (S1), new methodologies for stakeholder engagement (S2) and co-creation of innovative solutions on materials (S3, S4), waste (S9) and energy resources (S11).

Issues tackled

The following circular solutions will be developed and demonstrated at building scale in this demo building.

HOUSEFUL solutions

Actors involved

Leitat (ES)
ITEC (ES)
Cartif (ES)
Alchemia Nova (AT)
Agencia de Habitatge de Catalunya (ES)
Visum (ES)
Aiguasol (ES)
LGI (FR)
Architekturburo Reinberg (AT)
Turntoo (NL)
Neues Leben (AT)
Housing Europe (EU)
WE&B (ES)
Icons (IT)
IDP (ES)
Homebiogas (IL)

Actions carried out

S1 Definition of a new method for the analysis of Building circularity
SaaS – Software as a Service
S2 Social engagement for co-creation
S3 Development of 4 Material Passports based on advanced 3D model
S4 Searching local building material
S9 Optimal management of waste at the end of building life cycle
S11 Guarantee the energy saving/production in buildings

Results

HOUSEFUL’s main objectives are:

To develop a methodology to quantify the degree of circularity of buildings at different stages along their whole life cycle;
To demonstrate and validate the project’s methodology at lab scale and, in 4 selected European buildings, at large scale;
To assess the potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the demonstrated circular strategies;
To ensure the marketability of HOUSEFUL’s circular solutions as an integrated systemic service and the development of a Software as a Service for replication of services in the housing sector;
To deliver policy recommendations at local, regional, national and EU scale to foster circularity in housing;
To raise awareness and acceptance of HOUSEFUL services among the public and relevant stakeholders to foster their replication.

HOUSEFUL’s interventions are expected to have the following impacts:

Reduction in the use of resources (materials, energy and water) in the housing sector;
Reduction of waste destined to landfills (from current 40% to 10% in 10 years);
Recovery of >95% of food waste at home level;
Recycling of >90% of rainwater, greywater and blackwater for production of reclaimed water and biogas;
Production of high quality biogas and efficient valorisation (>90% conversion yield) as renewable heat and/or power at home level;
High quality compost production from digestate (approx. 0.55 kg compost/kg digestate);
Reduction of non-renewable primary energy consumption of buildings up to 50%;
Reduction of up to 60% of CO2 emissions, contributing to the efforts to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5ºC, as provided for in the COP21 Paris Agreement.

Why it works

The project is still underway.

One concrete example was presented at 7th International Conference on Sustainable Solid Waste Management by Dolores Hidalgo, Director of the Circular Economy Area at the CARTIF technology center and member of the HOUSEFUL consortium. She gave a presentation on biogas upgrading using micro-porous hollow fiber membrane contactors.

The conference focused on the promotion of practices and technologies for a better and more sustainable management of modern solid waste. Concepts such as separation at source, waste-to-energy technologies, biowaste utilization, recycling promotion and many more were at the core of the event.

Special emphasis was placed on circular economy in all key action areas and all priority sectors, including here some aspects related to the HOUSEFUL project, such as food waste, biomass products and construction & demolition waste management.

Scale

local

More information

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and Innovation programme under grant agreement N°776708

Housing Europe coordinates the Collaborative Community of Housing Experts (CCHE) that provides feedback to the project is ongoing. The CCHE will also be involved in the selection of Follower Buildings that will replicate the HOUSEFUL solutions. The Housing Evolutions Hub provides a special forum for the CCHE, experts and professionals to exchange on Circular Solutions in the residential sector. (registration is needed)

The project leaflet: http://houseful.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/HSF-Leaflet-WEB.pdf

http://houseful.eu