SHare Optimize REimagine (SHORE) - reframing circular economy for the real estate and construction industry

The built environment is a major contributor to climate change, and a key consumer of global resources.

Moreover, a significant amount of embodied carbon, energy, and economic capital is currently tied to obsolete buildings. Simultaneously, new construction with significant construction phase emissions and resource use takes place.

The circular economy discourse within built environment has to date mainly focused on cradle-to-cradle design practices and salvaging building materials for new construction.

This is paradoxical, as the transition from a linear to a circular economy is not possible without optimizing the use of the existing building stock.

This research proposal focuses on tackling the problematic via circular approaches such as shared spaces and adaptive reuse. The underlying logic is to create value from waste, waste here referring to vacant or underused space.

The mission of the proposed research, "SHare, Optimize, Reimagine – reframing circular economy for the real estate and construction industry" is to collectively reimagine a circular future for the real estate and construction industry.

SHORE will establish, through transdisciplinary research and co-creative knowledge labs in Sweden and Finland, how sharing could shape the business, how adaptive reuse could be optimized for both cost and carbon, and how circularityreal estate and construction industry could be reached in the future.