Guide to circular school construction

cuypers & Q interprofessional architectural company

Circularity is often associated with only a few sub-components of what it exactly entails. The subject is not always easy to explain to clients and users and it is often pushed into a corner because it is 'too expensive' or 'too ambitious'. Yet it is perfectly possible in the various stages of a project to sensitize people towards circularity.

With this project, the architectural firm cuypers & Q wants to contribute to this. It focuses on a target group that is close to their hearts and in which they have a great deal of expertise: the education sector.

Plenty of investments are being made in the construction and renovation of school buildings, but the usual paths do not leave enough room for circular ambitions. Budgets are still too often determined in general terms, specifications often classically written out. This leaves a lot of opportunities in the circular economy.

That is why cuypers & Q created a hands-on guide for circular school construction. There are separate initiatives to make clients and users aware of circular construction, but school boards have a lot on their minds. As a result, circularity is often only discussed in the design phase, while it is actually a crucial topic that needs to be thought about in the preliminary and pre-contractual stages.

With this project, the partners want to give principals and school boards all the tools they need to prepare their construction project and to think about their circular ambition level and the steps towards it from the start. The project team also wants to make an educational game and an awareness campaign available to be used during the 'sustainability' teaching package. After all, today's children are tomorrow's building owners.