As the population rises and cities continue to develop, new building construction and urban renewal in Israel is steadily increasing. However, the existing methods cannot address the need for safe housing while reducing emissions from the construction sector. With ambitious goals and a binding commitment to the UN to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, we must implement innovative and effective deep mix-uses techniques to deal with overcrowding, loneliness and food insecurity. This project proposes to introduce the rehabilitation of existing buildings into the urban renewal method and turn them into public buildings while integrating analytical tools and public policy. It proposes a regenerative building design for mixed-use, residential and commercial buildings that result in (1) a holistic building complex providing all occupants with access to the outdoors, fresh food, medical needs, and social interaction; and (2) reductions of CO2 emissions in Israel’s construction sector. Using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), it is established that the proposed design emits 30% less carbon dioxide than current building practices. The project can be adapted to other cities in a short time.

Circular Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a technology that can reduce city waste and increase material lifetime. COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that AM can be a feasible and fast solution to problems in urban areas. AM is a novel technology that can close waste loops at the end of the supply chain. Circular AM adds a recycling feature by reducing waste products and bringing them back in transformed form. Using the combination of technology and innovation, where technology is Additive Manufacturing also known as 3D printing, and Circularity is the innovation; we developed 3D printed elements with several functions that can lead to local manufactured goods. Characterized for being fast prototyping and customized solutions for temporary and natural disasters construction, living, buildings, urban spaces and health industry. The use of waste flows in cities will reduce resources, connect industries and bring materials back to the system as functional pieces in different construction sectors and urban spaces. The aim of this approach is to close loops at different urban scales and create a new system mainly circular connecting sectors and industries to bring materials back to human spaces. This study suggests simple nature shapes and modularity as key elements in the creation of urban pieces. In a fist stage, we combined nature patterns such as hexagon-shaped panels and other variations; and modularity implemented in ancient Japanese wood joinery techniques to create solutions for cities regarding construction, accommodation, urban functions and support in disaster events.

In the development of biobased products, the choice of the feedstock, the development of the material and the design of the product are intimately linked. For example, the choice of a certain feedstock can have consequences on the possible end-of-life strategies of the product. For successful biobased product design, it is therefore proposed to adopt the Feedstock – Material – Product combination (FMP-combination)-approach (Sauerwein et al., 2023). Many FMP-combinations are possible in a biobased society. It is therefore essential to have an assessment tool that is able to discriminate between promising and less-promising FMP-combinations. Ideally, both environmental, social and economic aspects should be considered in such an assessment tool. However, the availability of holistic frameworks to assess the sustainability of biobased products is limited. Extensive assessing on multiple indicators through (Social-) Life Cycle Analysis, proves to be difficult due to data availability and methodological challenges (Rafiaani et al., 2018; Siebert et al., 2018; Van Schoubroeck et al., 2018; Weiss et al., 2012). In this research, we therefore developed an environmental assessment framework that allows to map the environmental impact of FMP-combinations. In development of this framework, we introduce the concept of biobased resource scarcity. The framework is meant to be used to monitor the potential environmental impact of FMP-combinations during their development and to assess the environmental impact of existing biobased products in a fast and limited data required way. To develop the framework, a selection of literature was used to obtain reported indicators and their frequency of occurrence. The goal was to select indicators that are determinative for the overall environmental performance of an FMP-combinations and based on the likeliness of data availability. The allocation of the indicators to their specific phase was done based on their relevance and expected impact; land use has a bigger role during the feedstock phase due to lower volumes of product per area and carbon storage predominantly takes place in the material phase. The term biobased resource scarcity is introduced to express the competition for biobased resources between biobased production chains; a plant based residual stream used for a biobased material cannot be used for other applications as well. In Figure 1 we present the framework, which is a start for a holistic framework to assess FMP-combinations on their environmental performance.