Designing an Irresistible Circular Society (DESIRE) aims to create an alternative way forward for the built environment supporting the EU mission of ‘100 climate-neutral and smart cities’. Against seemingly insurmountable challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion we need to rethink our approach to finding solutions. Departing from architecture, design and art we will create an open learning environment with principles, methods and guidelines to support us in designing an irresistible circular society. We will present a DESIRE lighthouse demonstrator, built on insights and learnings from on-site demonstration activities taking place on sites in Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia, and The Netherlands, encompassing various themes and scales. By this, we will set the foundation for a school of thought and practice, and establish a scaling framework for widespread learning across the EU utilizing digital infrastructure, stakeholder involvement and empowerment across a partner community of European cities, youth organisations, NGOs, academia etc. Our territorial sites form the core of DESIRE. Three themes have informed our choice of sites and partners. ‘Creating social and inclusive housing’ addresses the need for inclusive processes, ‘the power of we’, in circular transformation of social housing. ‘Reconciling cities with nature’ is about designing livable habitats and functional ecosystems from a multispecies perspective while rebalancing ‘land use’ to accommodate resource generation and biodiversity. ‘Transforming through symbiotic relationships’ focuses on how to optimize use of materials flow when rethinking urban landscapes in cities. In depts on-site demonstration activities will unfold in three Danish sites (an old asphalt factory in Herlev, a social housing neighbourhood in Taastrup, and an urban transformation project in Kalundborg) and contribute to similar demonstration activities in Amsterdam, Ljubljana, Milan, Riga and Turin.

To this day, many techniques, tools and approaches have been developed and tested either on a lab scale or in pilot buildings around Europe. These demonstrations have served as great showcases for circular built environments, but they are yet to be demonstrated at higher level. Copenhagen, Hamburg, Helsinki region (City of Vantaa) and Greater London have teamed up with partners from the entire built environment value chain. The results will have a direct uptake in the value chain and enable cities to initiate circular transition. CIRCuIT will demonstrate three innovative solutions in the four cities: dismantle buildings to reuse materials; transformation and refurbishment; and design for disassembly and flexible construction. CIRCuIT will develop urban planning instruments to support cities in implementing circular construction solutions and initiate changes at system level; implement a Circularity Hub, a data platform to evaluate progress of circular economy and regenerative capacity; and set up a knowledge sharing structure, the CIRCuIT Academy, to promote upscaling of solutions. London, Hamburg, Helsinki region and Copenhagen have the ambition to bridge the implementation gap from individual pilots to the actual circular and regenerative city, by demonstrating the application of current and future developed tools and instruments for circular built environment at a city level in 36 demonstration projects. It is the intention to boost the regenerative capacity of the three cities and Helsinki region, and finalise the development of an advanced set of indicators for impact measurement in an effective and cross-European monitoring programme. The aim is to increase the regenerative capacity in the four cities, and to reduce the yearly consumption of virgin raw material by 20% in new built environments, and to show cost savings of 15%.