What does circular construction look like in practice? At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), students are addressing this issue in a seminar entitled ‘Circular Construction with Reclaimed Timber’, which is linked to the SIRCULAR project.
The seminar addresses a key challenge for the construction sector: how can materials from existing buildings be reused instead of becoming waste after demolition or refurbishment? Working with reclaimed timber from deconstruction projects, the students analyse, sort and assess the available material before designing a new wall and façade system for an existing building on the KIT campus. Their design is then tested at full scale, bringing the process from dismantling to reuse to life.
This approach reflects a broader change in how we think about buildings. Rather than viewing existing structures as merely objects to be renovated or demolished, circular construction recognises them as potential material banks containing resources that can be kept in use for much longer. This approach is becoming increasingly relevant as the construction sector looks for ways to reduce its demand for raw materials and keep valuable resources in circulation.
Learning by building
At KIT, these principles are being researched and incorporated into teaching. By working directly with reclaimed materials, students encounter some of the practical questions that arise from reuse: What can be recovered? How can existing materials be incorporated into new designs? How can building components be designed so that they can be dismantled and reused in the future?
The resulting construction shows how reclaimed timber can be used in new building solutions. Demountable connections allow wooden elements to be assembled and taken apart for potential reuse.
SIRCULAR’s work in Karlsruhe
KIT is one of the SIRCULAR project’s demonstration sites. The selected building on the campus was constructed in 1970 and is still used by the Faculty of Civil Engineering. Within the project, the site provides an opportunity to investigate how renovation, decarbonisation and circularity can be combined in an existing building. Digital tools are also being explored to inform decisions relating to materials, carbon emissions and circularity throughout the building’s life cycle.
The student seminar adds another dimension to this work. It demonstrates that the transition towards circular construction requires not only new technologies, but also new skills and ways of thinking. Integrating these principles into educationenables future professionals to gain experience with circular approaches before entering professional practice.
The small-scale experiments taking place at KIT today therefore point towards a much bigger question for the construction sector: how can the buildings and materials we already have become resources for what we build next?