Resource Salvation

Chapter 5Practitioners

This chapter describes the experiences of four organizations that have considerable expertise of working with reuse of materials and components and have developed business models based on the circular economy. They all responded to a list of questions about how they are able to put reuse into their core activities from a design and construction perspective, and how this affects their process of creating buildings.

5.1 Rotor

Rotor is a new type of organization that offers a variety of services and initiatives to address material flows in the construction industry. Based in Brussels, Belgium, it develops critical positions on design, material resources and waste through research, exhibitions, publications and consultancy. On a practical level Rotor handles the design and realization of small architectural projects and acts as a supplier of reclaimed materials. Below Rotor explains its approach to maximizing material reuse.^a

How do you work to maximize material and component reuse in the built environment?

Members of Rotor are actively developing a range of services aimed at facilitating the reuse of building materials and components, and have established a variety of relationships with designers. For some projects, Rotor acts as the principal designer, directly appointed by the client. In other cases, it is appointed as a consultant to the design team. Rotor has also put in place various initiatives to improve the availability of second use materials, ...