Secondary resources in architecture

The aim of this research is to explore to what extent architecture can provide a response to our contemporary overspending of resources. The research will illustrate at the scale of a neighbourhood how natural metabolism can be transformed into a technical metabolism, pursuing to implement industrial ecology in a given urban area.
This research is multifaceted and takes its departure in the secondary resources of the Anthropocene. An environmental speculation follows with the application of low consuming strategies and the integration of resources provided by neighbours living in a housing area of the ´60s which is regarded as a ghetto. After mapping these three factors, namely secondary resources, low emission strategies, and integration of human resources, a qualified analysis discovers potentials that are finally reflected in a set of design parameters. These parameters constitute the background of the programme for an architectural project.
Inquiries on how streams of specific resources may flow in circular loops are used as design drivers. A focus is placed on new sustainable business models. Through this process several questions are formulated: How can the potentials of waste become resources for development? What values can a careful extraction of industrial building resources add to our urban areas? How can the mining of secondary resources in cities preserve primary resources in the future? What if these actions could offer working possibilities for the excluded human resources?
The integration in a place of locally mined resources has the ability to narrate the aesthetics and identity of that place. The chosen case project illustrates an architectural design that relates to its context, reflecting the history of our social welfare architecture, expressing a built environmental diversity as an architectural patchwork that offers a social proposal for local businesses and new common facilities for the housing area.