“The House for the City” will be a building for everyone. A building that will give a new meaning to the traditional town hall.
Combining the municipal components of four locations into one, a compact volume is created, leaving room for other buildings in the area. No less than 99.2% of the harvested materials from the Municipal Office will be reused. Sustainability is self-evident in this building.
The materials will be made immediately available to the city, offered to the market via a digital platform, or will find a destination in the new city hall. The aim is to ensure that a kind of ‘track and trace’ is applied to the harvested materials, which shows where the material is (pre) reused.
Heezen
ABC Nova
Kraaijvanger Architects approached us in 2020 with the question if we can create a product that reuses waste from the existing building. They were looking to use it as flooring at the entrance floor of the new House of the City in the city of Helmond, The Netherlands.
After our experience from the Edge West project in Amsterdam, where we ran a pilot to upcycle demolition waste from the site into brand new WasteBasedSlips® for the new interior of the building, we are proud to announce a second pilot on Dutch soil.
Producing a new product from an unfamiliar type of waste creates a lot of uncertainty, especially about the aesthetics of the product. The materials that we include in our recipe will largely determine the appearance of the final product, so the true ‘flavour‘ of the brick will only reveal itself after going through our extensive production process.
Luckily, Kraaijvanger understands this better than anyone and is open to experimentation. At FRONT®, we love going through this process together with all involved parties, so we will work in three rounds of collaborative development towards this one-of-a-kind product with waste from the donor building.
Delivering high-standard circular products starts with the dismantling and “harvesting” of materials during the demolition phase. That is why we also work closely together with M. Heezen, a Dutch family business that not only specializes in demolition, remediation and infrastructure technology but also in recycling.
Together we look at how we can turn linear material flows into circular ones and offer them a second life.
M. Heezen has noticed in practice that they can often reuse much more demolition waste than clients expect in advance. For example, rubble and soil can often be reused on site.
By working together with demolition, civil engineering and landscaping companies on making the switch to circular construction, products can be designed more efficiently and materials can be reused as much as possible. In this way, raw materials and energy can be used more efficiently.
Because our custom product will be used as flooring, we develop two formats of brick slips that can be laid in a pattern.
Development starts with a grey brick slip with the highest possible amount of demolition waste from the demolished town hall. Based on our results, we will continue to fine-tune the product to the final end product. Make sure to keep an eye on this page for updates on this process.
Demolition has started in 2021 and construction is scheduled to be finished in 2023.
The word demolition suggests that the materials are reaching the end of their useful life. When harvesting, however, the materials are the source for new materials or a new product. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do with the materials from the old City Office.
This project is in the top 10 for circular demolition. The municipality of Helmond has chosen to aim high.
A world that is constantly in motion requires a continuous cycle of remediation, demolition, recycling, construction and maintenance.
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