Exploring secondary resources in an architectural project

The research aims to explore to which extent secondary resources can
provide a response to architecture at a time when the building sector is
overspending the use of primary resources. The research illustrates, at the
scale of a neighbourhood, how natural metabolism can be transformed into
a technical metabolism, pursuing it to implement industrial ecology. The
investigation is multifaceted and takes its departure in the secondary resources
of the Anthropocene. In order to understand the question of resources,
local resource streams are studied.

The secondary resources found are salvaged and mapped. Possibilities for
the integration of human resources are analysed. Inquiries on how streams
of specific resources may flow in circular loops are used as design drivers. A
focus on circular sustainable business models is explored. Qualified potentials
are reflected in a set of design intentions. These intentions constitute
the architectural case project. The findings mention the aspects found at
the different research activities: from investigating industrial ecology to the
concrete salvage of resources, and how to turn the resources into building
components. Integration is achieved by realizing how locally found resources
have the ability to narrate the aesthetics and identities of the site.

The case project illustrates an architectural design answer which relates to its
context, reflects the history of our social welfare architecture, and expresses
a built environmental diversity as an architectural patchwork which offers a
proposal for new social facilities in the housing area. The discussion draws
upon some open perspectives from other initiatives in society where industrial
ecology has been used to overcome the complex questions of reorganizing
already existing waste management habits.