The Swiss city of Baden is the focus of a new research project on the reuse of building components at city level, according to a statement. The Buildings and Cities research programme, which is managed by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE), launched in January with Baden as a case study. The Zurich-based company intep (Integrale Planung GmbH) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) are also involved.
The project will run for around two years and is largely financed by the SFOE. The city of Baden is contributing about a quarter of the project costs and the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) is also participating. "The city of Baden will benefit from personalized findings that will be useful for the city's own construction projects and the ongoing revision of land use planning," commented City Mayor Markus Schneider in the statement.
In the research project "Reuse to attain the net-zero target for buildings", the focus is on direct reuse in other buildings rather than on recycling components. The project is modelling component flows, determining the environmental impact, and systematically recording the necessary framework conditions and measures for broad application, according to a statement from intep.
"The CO2 emissions of a building over its entire lifetime – so not only during operation, but also during construction – have an important and as yet underestimated role to play in the necessary reduction of CO2 emissions to net zero," commented Nadja Lavanga, project manager at intep.
As examples of areas for reduction, Christian Vogler, energy coordinator for the city of Baden, cites "maintaining existing buildings instead of building new ones, circular and resource-saving construction methods, reusing building components, and recycling". gba
