Concexec - Arquitectura, Lda., national SME of the Architecture sector, leads the consortium of the Project "CircularBuild - Development and Validation of the Circularity Concept Applied to the Modular Prefabricated Construction", approved in the scope of the Call - Projects for the Promotion of the Circular Economy in the Construction Sector, belonging the program "Environment, Climate Change and Low Carbon Economy" of EEA Grants (Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area).
The national promoters, along with a Norwegian partner, intend to evolve the concept of prefabricated modular construction by researching alternative materials that will allow the construction of more environmentally sustainable panels. At the end of their life cycle, these panels are to be separated, reused and therefore reintroduced in the production cycle as raw material for the manufacture of new panels.
The implementation of the project involves research and validation – in a laboratory context (tests and trials on materials and panels) and in an industrial context (production process) - of new materials as well as development and construction of the pilot facility, which will enable energy efficiency monitoring of the building in order to ensure that the new materials don’t compromise the energy performance of the final product.
EEA Grants - funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway - will support 85% of the total budget of the CircularBuild project. This support aims to invest in those European Union Member States with the largest deviations from the European average per capita GDP, therefore covering Portugal.
The project consortium stands out for its multidisciplinary and complementarity of skills, means and resources: CONCEXEC (project leader that owes all the R&D that underlies the CircularBuild system), LNEC (non-corporate entity that ensures the know-how and the physical and technical means for the functional validation of the new materials); RISE (Norwegian laboratory with skills and means to carry out specific fire resistance assays) and Cluster Habitat (that will ensure a full transfer of the know-how generated to the sector and the national coverage of the project impacts).
CircularBuild will be carried out in a period of two years - being scheduled to start in October -, the results of which are expected to be long lasting, far exceeding the project's life span.