Smart Building

A new technology extracting wood fibres from laminate flooring highlights the environmental and economic benefits of recycling fibreboard products

A steam explosion process is being used at a pilot plant in Bazeilles, France, to recycle laminate flooring and its primary constituents – medium-density fibreboard (MDF) and high-density fibreboard (HDF). Owned by leading laminate flooring manufacturer Unilin, the plant demonstrates the developed technology’s huge potential, proving that fibres can be extracted and reused with no significant impact on quality and that recycling has economic benefits.

The flooring sector is still far from sustainable, with only a small percentage of waste currently being recycled. Laminate flooring and all MDF and HDF products are considered non-recyclable and end up in landfills or are incinerated at the end of their life. This is something that Unilin and its 19 partners participating in the EU-funded CISUFLO project are working to change. They are developing new technologies and products that improve material recovery and are fit for a circular economy.

What is in a laminate

As described in the 2023-2024 Annual Report of CISUFLO project partner European Panel Federation, Belgium, laminate flooring typically consists of an HDF substrate and a decorative surface and wear layer. “On the underside, there’s a balancing layer, with top and bottom layers made of paper impregnated with aminoplastic thermosetting resins,” the report continues, adding that the primary component of laminate flooring is the HDF, which forms its core. “The recyclability of laminate material relies on its ease of disassembly and removal. Presently, laminates exhibit promising recyclability potential, given that they comprise 85% fibreboard, composed of fibres bonded to the material’s core, and enveloped by impregnated decorative papers.”

The recycling technology

Developed to close the recycling loop, Unilin’s technology is based on a thermo-mechanical process called steam explosion, which makes it possible to extract valuable wood fibres from products – in particular laminate floors – that contain MDF or HDF. The fibres are then prepared for reuse and used as a replacement for virgin fibres in an HDF production process.

Unilin’s pilot line at its MDF mill in France produces over 1 tonne of recycled fibres per hour. The fibres are then immediately used to produce new MDF and HDF products. The relatively small plant highlights the technology’s advantages: fibres can be extracted and reused without significantly affecting quality, recycling is economically advantageous and that process is more energy-saving than fibre production based on virgin wood.

A press release posted on the website of the European Panel Foundation states: “This success refutes the sometimes perceived image of MDF/HDF as being a non-recyclable product and instead demonstrates its circularity, for which European wood-based panels are known.” The CISUFLO (CIrcular SUstainable FLOor coverings) project ends in 2025.

Researchers from the Technical University of Munich hope to transform building envelopes into habitats for animals, plants and microorganisms.

The urban realm is growing. Many people who live in these areas would like to see their cities become green, biodiverse and highly livable spaces. Yet, animals, plants and microorganisms can only flourish where species-appropriate habitats are available and their needs are taken into consideration. In the ECOlogical building enveLOPES (ECOLOPES) project, Wolfgang Weisser, professor of terrestrial ecology at TUM, is working with international partners to develop a tool for designing building envelopes that are more in touch with nature and take account of other organisms. The project team comprises researchers from TUM, the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Genoa, and the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, as well as two industry partners.

Developing a new plug-in

“We want to make the knowledge of biologists and ecologists available to architects and urban designers – and in a way that aligns with their working methods,” says Weisser. His team is therefore developing an ecological model that can be used in architectural software solutions already used for computer-assisted planning of building envelopes and façades. Architects have harnessed this software to date to calculate thermal losses and the need for air-conditioning systems.

In the future, this model will allow architects to access data on animals, plants and microorganisms that could call these envelopes home. This includes information about hiding places, nesting methods and sources of sustenance, as well as their ability to coexist with other organisms. This tool is based on a methodology called Animal-Aided Design, which aims to promote the protection and integration of wild animals in urban design and development.

A sound base of scientific data

“At the moment, building designs place a strong emphasis on aesthetic considerations. Nature is, to some extent, the ‘glitter’ on the architectural design. Our vision is to make nature an equivalent part of planning – based on well-grounded knowledge,” says Viky Culshaw, a postdoctoral researcher and mathematician from Scotland, who has been involved in the animal-based part of the project right from the beginning in 2021.

To provide this in-depth knowledge, researchers must feed the plugin with a large number of data sets. For this, the ECOLOPES team screens scientific publications about ecological niches and food preferences, collaborates with other institutions to create their own research data, and uses databases about, for example, animal migration.

Image: A conceptual layered map result from the ecological model plug-in analysis. It shows the number of animals and plants living on a building, while considering information about the building's shade and where soil (brown) is located on the building. Dark colors mean many animals and plants in that area , while white means there are few. (Figure was created by Viky Culshaw and Francesca Mosca)

Urban dwellers across the EU are having a say in making their surroundings friendlier to people and the environment

In the Italian town of Nepi last year, a school covered floorspace in sheets and asked children to draw how they would change the urban layout. Elsewhere in the town, a care centre for elderly people quizzed them on the same topic in a questionnaire.

The drawings by the children and answers from the care centre’s occupants touched on issues affecting wellbeing including water, food, energy and social interaction. Sustainability was also a primary concern, with children even coming up with an idea that resulted in a planned rain garden for water purification. 

People power

Both groups in Nepi, which has a population of about 10 000 and is located 50 kilometres north of Rome, took part in a research project that received EU funding to help spur the development of more environmentally sustainable, socially inclusive and aesthetically pleasing urban areas. 

‘It’s more of a bottom-up, people-centric approach – starting from the people living in the cities themselves,’ said Alessia Peluchetti, an urban-simulation engineer at Italy-based Rina Consulting, which manages the project and specialises in energy, transport and infrastructure development.

Called EHHUR, the project began in October 2022 and is due to run through September 2025.

The initiative is also getting urban residents and businesses involved in regenerating cities in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Portugal and Turkey. 

The project takes inspiration from the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative to make living in Europe more sustainable, enriching and inclusive. The EU is organising an NEB festival in the Belgian capital Brussels on 9-13 April. EEHUR also supports the European Green Deal seeking to make the EU climate neutral by 2050.

Cities are central to Europe’s climate goal because they’re home to around three-quarters of EU residents and are responsible for most of the continent’s energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Hearts and hands

EHHUR is an acronym for “Eyes Hearts Hands Urban Revolution” – meant to capture the visual, social and practical considerations driving the project.

‘If we want people to use city spaces, we need to create spaces that are attractive and help reduce inequalities,’ said Peluchetti.

Energy efficiency is one focus of EHHUR, which is harnessing new technologies as well as the arts. 

Planned renovations for energy savings at two primary schools and a university in the northern Greek city of Kozani, for example, include better heat insulation and rooftop solar panels.

Local residents were involved in the design by helping decide on the aesthetics of the refurbished buildings. The renovations are scheduled to start within six months. 

In the northern Portuguese municipality of Maia outside Porto, EHHUR researchers plan to organise events in which local artists will perform on the street in July 2025. One spectacle will be a puppet show. The aim is to celebrate the talents and culture of residents and facilitate integration in the community.

In the northern Belgian municipality of Zoersel, a renovated library will host local-language lessons for foreigners in a bid to strengthen integration. 

Three other key urban demonstration sites under the project are Høje-Taastrup in Denmark, Osijek in Croatia and Izmir in Turkey. All seven places – including Nepi, Kozani, Maia and Zoersel – are dubbed “lighthouse districts”.

The overall aim is to build a sense of joint ownership of and investment in shared spaces. 

In Høje-Taastrup, an “energy community’’ will be established for local residents to decide on their preferred clean-power options such as solar panels and electric-vehicle charging points.

In Izmir, a historic shopping centre will undergo regeneration to create a craft and cultural space. The aim is to strengthen public awareness of the history of the city – one of the oldest in the Mediterranean world and known as Smyrna in antiquity – as well as bonds among people.

“Meanwhile spaces”

Cities across Europe are full of vacant buildings, empty plots of land and underused areas – all of which another EU-funded project believes can be tapped to accelerate regeneration.

Named T-Factor, the project has demonstrated temporary-use options for such spots and describes them as “meanwhile spaces”. It started in June 2020 and is due to run through May 2024.

‘We have been trying to understand how we could turn empty and transient spaces into opportunities for more inclusive and equitable urban regeneration,’ said Laura Martelloni, who co-leads T-Factor and is a designer at ANCI Toscana, the regional network of Tuscan municipalities in Italy.

Six test sites in Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK are part of the project. They range from the Euston neighbourhood in London to the former industrial site of Zorrotzaurre in Bilbao.

More inclusive

In Euston, community festivals and engagement through arts were developed to make public spaces more liveable, safe and convivial.

T-Factor worked with community groups to help them have a say within official bodies overseeing the area’s redevelopment. That means local residents can influence urban-development decisions and become more empowered to champion “meanwhile uses” for inclusive participation.

A similar story occurred in Zorrotzaurre. 

There, T-Factor worked for the sustainable use and recycling of resources among creative associations, digital innovators and designers and residents. This experience is now leading to the creation of a civic design council in which involved Bilbao residents will have more of a say over future development of the city.

For example, they could use their voice in the council to turn the successful temporary use of a space as a market into a permanent feature. 

T-Factor plans to publish a paper in April 2024 with recommendations for spreading the temporary use of city spaces and making it a stronger feature of urban regeneration across Europe.

One planned recommendation is for temporary-use projects to take a “portfolio approach” so that complex challenges such as climate stress and social inequalities are tackled simultaneously rather than in isolation.

Another draft proposal is for a new generation of professionals with expertise in the field to be encouraged and to become resources within municipal organisations as they develop temporary-use arrangements.

In general, policymakers should experiment with temporary uses of public spaces with a view, when such tests prove successful, to making them more lasting, according to Martelloni. She signalled that the task itself is permanent.

‘Cities continuously need regeneration because they change so fast,’ Martelloni said.

Author:

Jack McGovan

Image: The Zorrotzaurre area in Bilbao, Spain is part of EU urban-regeneration initiatives. ©Patrick van Baarle

This article was originally published in Horizon the EU Research and Innovation Magazine.

MATRYCS toolbox offers stakeholders from the building sector, the opportunity to monitor and improve the energy performance of buildings; design facilitation and development of building infrastructure; receive policy impact assessments; and de-risk energy efficiency investments

A toolbox of data-driven applications designed to unlock the power of big data for building energy management and policy making was launched today in Brussels. The newly released MATRYCS toolbox - which was assessed by policymakers, IT developers, research centres and seven municipalities - offers stakeholders from the building sector, including estate managers, building owners, and local and European policy makers, the opportunity to monitor and improve the energy performance of buildings; design facilitation and development of building infrastructure; receive policy impact assessments; and de-risk energy efficiency investments.

“Harnessing the power of big data with tools like MATRYCS empowers local authorities, and other stakeholders in the building sector, to make informed decisions, foster energy efficiency, have greener buildings and ultimately pave the way for more climate neutral and resilient cities," shares Alis-Daniela Torres, Head of Green and Digital Transformation at ICLEI Europe.

The toolbox provides essential input to fulfil local authorities’ climate strategies and assess the impact of individual public measures and investments based on real building-related data. Access to aggregated information from across Europe can support, and legitimise, policymakers’ planning and work.

"The tool demonstrates a transformative approach to climate reporting and impact assessment for more effective urban sustainability. With further refinement, this tool has remarkable potential as a key asset to improve cities' decision-making in relation to their Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs)," affirms Dr Çağlar Tükel, Directorate of Climate Change and Clean Energy, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality (Turkey), one of the seven municipalities that helped test the MATRYCS tool.

"As a proactive municipality, we have undertaken significant strides towards the development of Gdynia's SECAP, reaffirming our commitment to a sustainable and resilient future. The tool's benchmarking capabilities and pragmatic policy insights could certainly support our SECAP development journey,” says Alicja Szczepańska, Energy Department, City of Gdynia (Poland).

Led by ICLEI Europe, the latest MATRYCS' pilot titled "SECAPs Decision-Making Support" seeks to convert data provided in annual municipal climate action reports, which are submitted through platforms like the CDP-ICLEI Track or MyCovenant, into a foundation for developing, monitoring, and overseeing the progress of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans.

The MATRYCS services are applicable across different building scales, from buildings as individual entities (building scale), to groups of buildings (district scale), groups of districts (city scale), groups of cities (regional scale), and national and European levels.

"I believe these services hold long-term value. They allow municipalities to track their progress and achievements, fostering corporate memory. Furthermore, seeing the success of other cities serves as an encouraging factor for continuous improvement," states Samet Keskin, Senior Urban Policy Expert, Marmara Municipalities Union (Turkey).

The project’s first prototype is on display at an exhibition in Shanghai, China

Produced by nature… with a little help from A.I. CRA’s latest startup Maestro prototypes “A.I. Timber”, an innovative construction material that reduces waste by preserving the original shapes of the trees. Instead of sawing unique logs into standardized boards, Maestro uses A.I. to fit them together like puzzle pieces. The project’s first prototype is on display at an exhibition in Shanghai, China.

Maestro, a new construction-technology startup born out of the design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, is unveiling the prototype for “A.I. Timber”, a new method for sustainable cross-laminated timber (CLT) production that uses artificial intelligence to preserve the original contour of each tree. A proof-of-concept structure, developed along with students and researchers from MIT and Tongji University, is on display at the “Digital Futures” exhibition in Shanghai until the fall.

As the construction industry works to reduce its emissions – cement production alone is responsible for 8% of global CO2 – mass timber has emerged as an alternative for sustainable construction. However, the industrial sawing process of cutting unique trees into standardized panels generates a large amount of wood waste.

A.I. Timber offers an alternative. Rather than reducing irregular trees into straight lines, Maestro uses A.I. and digital machining tools to scan a set of raw logs, flat saw them into boards, and identify the optimal sequence to fit them together. The process results in timber panels with tesselating boards which match one another like puzzle pieces, while shaving off as little of the tree as possible.

“Timber isn’t just a substitute for concrete; it unlocks new possibilities for prefabricated construction,” says Mykola Murashko, the 23-year-old Cambridge graduate who co-founded Maestro with Carlo Ratti, Director of the M.I.T. Senseable City Lab and founding partner at CRA. “Because engineered wood products are lightweight, renewable and dimensionally stable, we can design an entire building in our factory then ship the flatpack of its components to construction sites around the world. Maestro wants to revolutionize how we build, and that dream is rooted in innovations like A.I. Timber.”

Maestro is a newly-incorporated startup that aims to revolutionize the construction industry with bespoke prefabrication. After years of experiments in construction and building materials at CRA, Maestro uses technology to connect design and manufacturing, allowing a European supplier network to manufacture custom parts at a massive scale and create tailor-made, shippable buildings from scratch. This method promises to make building better, faster, and greener than ever before.

“Wood is one of the oldest building materials we have, and A.I. is letting us use it more sustainably,” says Carlo Ratti. “A.I. could reduce wood waste in cross-laminated timber (CLT) production by up to 30%, but that’s only one of the benefits. It’s also beautiful: the irregular geometry celebrates the original shape of the tree.We are using the artificial to bring out the brilliance of the natural.”

The first prototype of A.I. Timber was produced in Shanghai earlier this summer as part of the DigitalFUTURES conference organized by Tongji University professor Philip Yuan. During a one-week workshop Murashko and Nikita Klimenko of MIT instructed a team of international researchers on the use of A.I. Timber, building a proof-of-concept structure: a small, triangular pavilion visitors can interact with. The exhibition is open at Tongji University’s gallery until 15th September 2023.

New research reveals that, some 2,000 years ago, Roman water engineers were keeping up a regular programme of managing and maintaining the ancient water systems

While 21^st century water companies struggle to maintain clean, fresh supplies, new research today from an international team led by Oxford geoarchaeologist Dr Gül Sürmelihindi, reveals that, some 2,000 years ago, Roman water engineers were keeping up a regular programme of managing and maintaining the ancient water systems.

According to the research, published in Science Advances, ancient water management traces are captured in the limescale deposits which built up on the walls and floor of the ancient Roman aqueduct of Divona (Cahors, France).

The evidence shows that these deposits were regularly and partially removed during maintenance. It reveals, ‘The discovery of traces of regular maintenance in the carbonate deposits… such as tool marks, calcite deformation twins, debris from cleaning and repairs…are proof of periodic manual carbonate removal by Roman maintenance teams.’

The paper explains how, over decades, deposits could become many centimetres thick, clogging the aqueduct channel - if they were not cleaned out. According to the research, this was done every one to five years. It was carried out ‘rapidly and never in summer’ - as recommended by Roman author Sextus Julius Frontinus (AD 40–103). He wrote the only known treatise about maintenance of aqueducts when he was supervisor (curator) of the waterworks of the city of Rome. 

'At the start, we did not know what we were really looking for...this happens with discoveries: good and bad surprises…However, we think each aqueduct’s carbonate research from each ancient city has its own micro-story in the grander story of Roman life, waiting to be revealed,’ maintained Dr Sürmelihindi.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Divona aqueduct operated between the beginning of the 1^st century AD until the 4^th or the early 5^th century AD. Regular maintenance continued, albeit less frequently, until the last years of the aqueduct. 

The paper states, ‘We analysed stable oxygen isotopes to determine the seasonal (cyclic) temperature variation of water in the aqueduct, and used this profile to count the layers, recording 88 years of aqueduct activity. The position of the unconformities in this isotope profile showed that the time intervals between cleaning were 1–5 years, with a mean of 2.8 years, suggesting a regular cleaning regime.

‘The shape of the oxygen isotope profile showed that each cleaning was done in a short time, probably less than one month, and that this cleaning was done in spring, autumn, or winter, but never in summer.

As well as throwing light on water management practiced by the Romans, the team maintains that work on the aqueduct can help to reveal something about the local economy and political stability. Perhaps, worryingly, they say, ‘Regular maintenance can be taken as evidence for a well-structured organisation of an ancient town, while less regular maintenance…indicates socio-economic stress.’

Research on the aqueducts of Divona and neighbouring aqueducts is ongoing since, the authors suspect, they may give information not only on Roman life in late antiquity but also on the ultimate collapse of society in southern France due to political and environmental reasons.

Photo: Dr Surmelihindi and Divona evidence. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news