Affordable housing in Mechelen
In Flanders, it is getting more difficult to find an affordable rental or owner-occupied home. Besides the location of the building and the construction method, operating and maintenance costs also have a significant impact on our daily budget.
Circular construction begins with the design of a building. The choices made at the start of the building process have an increasing impact on the life cycle of the building. Not only for the contractor, but even financially, certain choices will have an impact on the feasibility of a building.
With our residential pilot project in Mechelen, IGEMO wants to investigate how we can apply BIM (building information management) to link design decisions to a circular strategy and future-oriented vision. How can change-oriented design and construction, linked with sustainable circular principles, provide a project where the affordability for the final residents can remain guaranteed in the long term?
In partnership with Embuild, we want, in the long term, to engage local governments, architects, and contractors to set the right circular ambitions right from the start of a project.
Circle-BIM goals
Our aim is to develop a transferable method within BIM for solutions concerning circular, future-proof design and (re)buildings that improve stakeholder collaboration and can lead to more affordable living in Flanders in the long term, and where the sustainability principles remain anchored.
CircleBIM will be used by all chain partners (design, execution, management, reuse) as a collaborative platform and help the public government to integrate circular aspects into their public contracts for new construction or renovation of buildings.
Goals:
- Registration of materials, products, and components in an open and accessible building passport.
- The BIM model makes lifetime layers, material flows, and detachability transparent.
- Using digital tracking for optimizing maintenance cycles.
By seeing the building as a ‘Layers of Brands’, we want to use the BIM tool to quantify environmental impact and accelerate change-oriented construction. Identifying all materials in a building passport will make management for the long term more appropriate.
Image © IGEMO
