ACAN! Blog - Circular series: RIBA Stage 4
excerpt from ACAN circular series blog, published on April 2022
Circular economy business models
Magdani focussed on how architects might gain competitive advantage through designing and planning for the circular economy. As the founder of Net Positive Solutions, a sustainable business consultancy, with former experience at Royal BAM, the Netherlands largest construction company, he has been exposed to many live construction projects in UK and Netherlands.
He explained how having a broader understanding of how we could shift from having a very short term mindset, to looking at value over a long term is important. He pointed at the findings of economists such as Sir Nicholas Stren who has linked our linear consumption patterns with market failure, and Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta who states in a recent review how we need to fix the disconnect between GDP, or financial wealth, and natural capital – and that doesn’t just go for natural capital, also human and social capital.
“While you do need to start with design, circular economy is broader than just design, it also requires a lot of collaboration, systems thinking, and opens the door to new business models.”
For example, if you increase biodiversity on a site, or design for deconstruction, how does that effects social and human capital, or financial capital over the life cycle of a project? Helping people understand that value, can identify new opportunities and turn it into a competitive advantage. Assets need to be identified with forethought, such as specifying meanwhile use, or opportunities for waste to be reused or repurposed before recycling.
“Waste is a mistake. Waste is material in the wrong place,” says Magdani. Waste is an opportunity – applying circular economy opportunities to reuse materials could entail identifying new products and services, looking at the sharing economy and the performance economy – and also generally shaking up the way we do business. “It’s not going to change just by designing in a different way, if we have the same contracts, the same incentivisation, tender and procurement.”
Magdani explained how some key lessons have been learnt at some pioneering projects. At CIRCL in Amsterdam, a BAM built project funded by ABN AMRO bank which was seeking to invest in sustainability, the aim was to demonstrate what circularity was. As well as elements such as materials including glulam beams, CLT, and a clipped façade, it was also important to have early contractor and supply chain involvement, as well as a focus on life cycle-thinking.
Another, ongoing case study, is Bijlmerbajes in the Netherlands, commissioned by Amsterdam City Council. Within an SOM Masterplan for the neighbourhood, BAM are addressing how the prison will be converted with maximum reuse – from concrete, which will be crushed to aggregate or reused in original form, to the steel prison bars to be reused as balcony railings. This project has shown how new types of procurement models and supply chain engagement are important to the circularity of this project.
Magdani sees the manufacturing industry taking on an important role in the future. They will be more related to their products once they have left the factory. When we use a product, we will be able to trace it back to exactly who produced it, through a material passport. Producers will be responsible for it and contracts will be set up for maintaining and eventually returning it.
Another aspect that will be changing is how clients manage the building’s information and ensure that maintenance regimes are proactive, he explains. There is huge potential in developing material exchange platforms. In the Netherlands, the term demolition contractor is going away, and it is being replaced with ‘urban miner’ – a company that goes it to look at how to retrieve wealth from existing building assets. We need to be looking at the environment that is already built, says Magdani.