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No abstract

The Jubilee Church is a contemporary building located on the eastern outskirts of Rome, Italy. Featuring components with non-standard geometries and innovative technical solutions, the church is now suffering from extensive and premature decay, despite having opened only 16 years ago. This research project aims to use data on premature ageing patterns and the consequent refurbishment of the Jubilee Church to reimagine its failings as a valuable learning. Following the appraisal of the building process and detailed analysis of its failing components and materials, this study calculates the economic impact of the building's premature decay. These data are interpreted to assess the economic feasibility of the ordinary maintenance of the building and the technical practicability of its restoration. This study demonstrates how the accelerated decay of such a contemporary building is due to several factors, including construction detailing that ignores characteristics of local weather, lack of ordinary maintenance due to excessive costs unaffordable for a small parish in the outskirts of Rome and untested materials not suitable for use in components with specific geometry. The paper aims to extend the value of this case study by highlighting some recommendations that can inform wider maintenance procedures for buildings with similar geometric and material characteristics.

This article is derived from a feasibility study for a single-story elevation at the Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) in the United Kingdom. This project embraced two fundamental principles of the circular economy: flexibility of interior spaces and Design for Disassembly (DfD). The goals were to reduce the risk of demolition and preserve the value of the building material to empower its later use. These principles formed the solution for the structural frame. For this paper, the engineering phase was carried out to improve the structural connections designed according to DfD principles and following generative design methods.

This study addresses the challenges and barriers associated with the implementation of circular economy principles in architectural design and construction practices. It highlights the fragmented knowledge and lack of a unified approach to circular design as a major obstacle hindering the adoption of circularity. The existing frameworks for assessing circularity, such as the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) protocol and the Level(s) assessment protocol, are applied to two projects with a high degree of deconstruction to understand their applicability in the architectural design process and identify their limitations. The study emphasises the significance of considering structural connectivity and circularity strategies during the concept-design stage, advocating for the incorporation of circularity at various scales beyond the microscale of materials. Furthermore, it emphasises the need for early implementation of Design for Disassembly (DfD) strategies on circularity scoring to enable meaningful comparisons of alternative designs using circularity metrics. The findings reveal the variability of circularity indicators based on the hierarchy of disassembly and highlights an early-stage design approach to deconstruction strategies to achieve circularity in architectural design. Overall, this study upscales the significance of a comprehensive and integrated approach to circularity in architectural design practices.