Amidst the environmental crisis and the fact that the building industry is one of the heaviest waste generators globally, it is imperative to develop circular systems of treating our city’s materials. These circular systems should aim to close or limit material and resource loss, and have the potential to minimise waste, using this as a resource in itself. The major waste material in cities is waste from building construction and demolition. If we could detect, sort and collect this waste for reuse then we would be able to treat buildings as material banks and urban environment as “mines”. The term “ Urban mining” is used to describe the process of recovering and reusing a city’s materials, which is the focus of the current Planning and Design studio.
During the studio students will investigate the potential impact of applying circular strategies and material re-use policies as an urban development mechanism. Through the analytics and material stock auditing on 4 main cities, students will extract principles for urban design proposals based on circular material availability and with the goal to increase density in cities. The work developed in the studio aims to form a consolidated body of knowledge establishing buildings as urban material banks in an interconnected network of physical and informational circular infrastructure.
For the purpose of this study, the Studio team will provide a digital interface based on computer vision and machine learning that enables students to collect building material data from standardised online street captures. During the first week, a computational workshop will be held to introduce students to the auditing tool and the technical possibilities for urban material prediction.
Based on a selected case study city, In the first stage, each group of students will collect open data and use the machine learning driven tool for developing highly accurate predictive analytics. Creating geolocated material distribution maps, identifying relevant interconnections among data, clustering zones based on building typologies and proposing re-use strategies and design principles for new urban densification are the main steps for the project development.
The urban design proposals will be additionally supported by the Urban Generative Design seminar, whose main focus is multi-objective optimisation for the urban realm.
At course completion the student will:
-be able to apply principles and concepts of Circular Design and Circular Economy in the urban environment;
-understand the basics of computer vision and the potential of machine learning for urban analytics and planning;
-be able to develop design and planning strategies following concepts of upcycling and re-use of local materials;
-ability to develop informed building typologies by overlaying multiple sources of data (cadastral, raster data etc.);
-understand the foundations related to urban policy for existing building material re-use and circular construction;
-apply principles of “Urban Mining” in a variety of urban contexts
Singapore, a quickly developing city-state is running out of land and linear expansion with new housing will soon no longer be an option. The project strategically targets public housing as a place of densification and a source of urban mining, aiming to solve the problem of upcoming precast concrete waste. Therefore a circular micro-district design … Read more
The New Delhi Material Repository and Urban Mining project focuses on the city’s sustainable development by implementing the principles of urban mining and establishing a material repository. As the capital city of India, New Delhi holds significant historical and governmental importance, with its urban fabric comprising a combination of planned and unplanned elements. However, with … Read more
Recycling construction materials is of paramount importance in a city like Barcelona due to its numerous environmental, economic, and social benefits. Barcelona, like many urban centers, faces challenges related to rapid urbanization, resource scarcity, and environmental sustainability. By implementing a robust construction material recycling concept, the city can significantly reduce its construction waste, lower its … Read more
The Boulevard Method utilizes big data analytics and multi-objective optimization processes to map the existing materials building stock and propose adata-driven urban strategy for the future densification of the city of Helsinki. By making the hypothesis that certain roadways will become obsolete in the future due to the transformation of urban mobility, this study analyzed … Read more
