During the summer of 2017, Anne Paduart and Stijn Elsen organised a 3-days Summer Workshop in the context of the ‘Circular Retrofit Lab’, the Belgian pilot project of the H2020 project ‘Buildings As Material Banks’. From Tuesday 4^th of July until the 6^th of July, student design teams experienced with a hands-on approach the challenges involved with the design and assembly of reversible and sustainable solutions. Students were assisted by a technical TRANSFORM team, in order to successfully integrate innovative reversible wall solutions in an existing building context, i.e. the context of the Circular Retrofit Lab. This living lab is situated in 8 existing modules of the student village in the center of the VUB campus of Etterbeek.

Three different wall solutions, each with a different focus on assembly speed, sustainable materials (cardboard profiles, wooden frames, steel kit-of-parts), reversibility and future reuse were tested in the living lab.

Also, each design team was challenged to be creative and come up with new future applications for the building components that are used in each solutions. How can we create new interior fitting-out elements with the reclaimed components of the walls assembled in the living lab today? 

The living lab tests are sponsored by Geberit, Gyproc, Wall-LinQ and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.