Among the approaches of circular construction, the reuse of buildings is the most desirable as it leaves a large portion of embodied carbon untouched. At the same time, it also minimizes the energy effort of modifying, transporting, or reprocessing components. Above all, the load-bearing structure is the central aspect. It is the most durable, most existentially imperative, most spatially defining, and the most energy-intensive part of a building (Fivet 2019; Hopkinson et al. 2018). Globally, many buildings’ astonishingly short lifespan results from the design’s short-sightedness, not that of its materials. While load-bearing structures can often serve for decades, uses change much more quickly. “All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong,” concluded Brand in his influential study of how buildings change over time (Brand 1995).
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