Type and Duration
FFF-Förderprojekt, July 2023 until December 2024Coordinator
Built Heritage & UpcyclingMain Research
Sustainable Planning and ConstructionDescription
The construction sector öfters the highest potential for reducing waste and resource depletion that arising environmental and climate challenge so urgently needs: Through enduring use instead of consumption,
enabled by the principles of reuse and circularity.
Concepts and design Solutions for reusable (building) Systems aren't new - many of them were just forgotten,
Since property protection by patent rights in the 19th Century, construction-related inventions and
ideas have been accumulating in the archives of patent Offices. Even if applications for modular, potentially
reusable construction Systems were primarily intended to rationalize construction processes, speed them
up and reduce costs and material consumption, these archived ideas are still among the most important
datasets from the history of industrial construction - even under the changed premise and today's requirement
for a circular construction industry.
The aim of the research project is the rediscovery and reconstruction of forgotten concepts and principles
of potentially reusable constructions, Systems and components from the inventory of European patent Offices.
The work has a focus on reusable building modules.