Buildings and infrastructure are responsible for over 30% of the UK's carbon emissions, produce over 60% of the UK's waste, and consume approximately 50% of all extracted materials globally. Radical change is urgently required to achieve a sustainable construction sector. The circular economy (CE) is a well-recognised opportunity to turn waste into resources while reducing carbon emissions. CE aims to keep materials at the highest value possible, via a hierarchy of strategies, e.g. first prioritising extending the lifetime of buildings, then reusing building elements directly in-situ or on another site, then remanufacturing elements, and finally recycling material to conserve resources and avoid disposal. However, CE is still far from typical construction practice. Action to date has largely focused on one-off case studies of individual buildings, or recycling targets leading to wasteful downcycling, and lacks the national-scale, systems-level impact that is so desperately needed. BuildZero's vision is one of a building stock that delivers the UK's space requirements but no longer relies on extraction of new resources, by leveraging the CE to meet materials needs, and eliminating both waste and carbon emissions from material extraction and production. Using this highly ambitious end goal as a springboard, we will explore CE solutions across multiple scales, identified, co-created and co-delivered with our highly engaged industrial consortium, assess the extent to which this vision is achievable nationally, regionally and in relation to individual buildings, and determine the conditions in which the BuildZero vision leads to favourable social, environmental, and economic outcomes. This new knowledge base will provide a platform to enable these solutions to be translated into practice at scale, catalysing regional and national policy to stimulate real change. To achieve this, we will develop an interdisciplinary, multi-scale systems model of buildings and resources flows, focused around four themes: Theme 1: How does the baseline state of the system, including the interplay between societal attitudes, current materials/buildings and legislation constrain moves towards a co-created vision? Theme 2: How far can solutions that make the best use of space take us towards this vision? Theme 3: How far can making the best use of materials, including waste resources, take us? Theme 4: How can our future needs & potential solutions combine to achieve a BuildZero future? To tackle these research challenges we will use methods from industrial ecology, to understand material stocks and flows; from architecture, structural engineering, and materials science, to understand the technical potential of CE solutions; from social sciences, to understand social attitudes and trade-offs; and from economics, to understand potential CE business models. As well as conducting novel research in each underpinning area, we will commit significant resources to working with stakeholders to synthesise findings on what a CE for buildings looks like, by creating interactive foresight/backcasting tools, co-creating future scenarios and identifying the actions needed to catalyse change. Demonstrator projects will apply research to specific contexts, generating early impact. We will build a fundamental understanding of how and when to implement CE strategies, investigating economic viability, social inclusivity, and zero-carbon compatibility, considering these across multiple geographical and policy scales. Our programme of research will culminate in the identification of pathways to achieve the BuildZero vision over different time frames, and a co-created 10 year research roadmap that outlines the remaining work required to deliver a BuildZero future.

Reducing the demand for new materials and reducing embodied carbon will be one of the most significant challenges that the construction sector faces in the coming decades. The 20th century oversaw a 23-fold increase in accumulated resources extracted, including materials currently locked in buildings and infrastructure. This rate of consumption far exceeds the planet's capacity to regenerate, and has serious implications for global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Addressing this interlinked material demand and emissions problem requires a step-change in practice, and implementation of circular economic (CE) reduce-reuse-recycle strategies, where materials are highly valued and remain in use for as long as possible. However, detailed knowledge of material types and quantities that are locked in the building stock is lacking, making estimation of CE potential unfeasible. This project will develop a spatially multi-scale framework to assess CE potential in individual buildings, cities and countries. Application of this new framework to non-residential construction in the UK will enable estimation of CE potential in the existing stock - at building, city and national level. The framework will utilise bottom-up material flow analysis to assess building level material intensity, embodied carbon and CE potential. This will be combined with remote sensing and satellite data to assess city level building stocks, with demand modelling applied to explore future material demand scenarios - considering different construction mixes and optimised CE potential. The embodied carbon implications of this material demand will also be forecast so it can be considered as part of UK decarbonisation pathways. This will be essential as the proportion of embodied carbon in the whole life carbon of the built environment is only increasing, and will continue to do so as the electricity grid is decarbonised and thus operational GHG emissions are minimised. This research will build the evidence base to demonstrate the role the circular economy can have in tackling these challenges in construction, and provide the knowledge required to facilitate shifts in policy and practice.

The aim of the proposed feasibility study is to evaluate the potential for buildings to provide demand response to electrical networks. Demand response is a way of managing grid constraints. This work is relevant to the UK's electricity system, since greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets are expected to result in greater use of renewables and greater electricity demand (through electrification of heat and transport loads), both of which impact on the way the electricity grid will operate in the future. The UK Government wishes to support flexibility in the electricity system, and recently requested evidence to support the development of greater flexibility. Demand response programs typically involve very large demand centres, co-ordinated by National Grid. In this instance we are interested in much smaller loads (which could be grouped together), which could offer services to the local Distribution Network Operator. Buildings can provide significant Demand Side Response capabilities given the nature of the thermal and electrical properties of buildings. This may be particularly useful in urban areas, where the electricity grid may be under greater strain in the future. Buildings could operate individually, or coordinate with other sites and assets in urban areas to form a Virtual Power Plant. The building we propose to study is the Urban Sciences Building. The Urban Sciences Building is located on Science Central, a 24-acre physical site being developed in partnership between Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council to provide a smart, sustainable, resilient city which links energy, transport and digital infrastructure in an urban context. The building will be a unique environment and a 'living' laboratory. The Urban Sciences Building is equipped with hundreds of sensors that can measure energy supply and demand. The building incorporates photovoltaic generation and large scale grid-connected battery storage. These two technologies can respond to local network needs for services (e.g. peak-shaving), and also act as a power source for the building in case of loss of mains power (i.e. islanded operation). The building is therefore ideal to study, due to the types of load and generation in the building. The site is also ideal to study, since the network is instrumented and other loads are close by. The academic team has the necessary skills to deliver the proposed programme of work, since the team has research expertise in buildings, electrical networks and storage. The team also benefit from collaboration with a number of industrial partners, who bring commercial expertise in similar fields. This ensures that project team are aware of the needs of a range of parties including: Building designers (Hawkins Brown, Buro Happold, NG Bailey) Building constructors (Bower and Kirkjland) Building operators (Newcastle University Estates department) Building Energy Management System provider (Siemens) Distribution Network Operator (Northern Powergrid) Site owner and developer (Newcastle City Council) Site energy service provider (Engie) Domestic property developer (Keepmoat) These industry and public sector partners provide direction to the project team through an Advisory Board. The Urban Sciences Building will be studied in detail, in order to analyse the size of load and generation, the speed of response available, and the potential duration of response. Once this analysis has been completed and the nature of Demand Side Response understood, we will then quantify the benefits for the local and wider networks and their operators. Operating the building to offer a Demand Side Response service will require changes to the management of the building. We will define the criteria for a new Building Energy Management System structure. We also plan to investigate the market barriers and enablers which affect the delivery of Demand Side Response by a single building, or groups of assets.

We live in a market-driven society where the provision of goods and services to people is often perceived as oriented towards the maximisation of profit at the expense of other social gains. This project proposes an innovative vision of society: one embedding social value as a core element of a thriving marked-driven society. It addresses the question: how can the social gains embedded in commercial activities be better redistributed in society? The 2015 Social Value Act does not contain a clear definition of social value. Nor does it establish criteria for measuring the social value impact of commercial activities on society. Effectively, law provides only limited guidance to redress the problem of redistribution of social gains in society. Architectural projects - especially renovation projects of public/communal spaces - face the same redistribution problem while delivering commercial value to the clients. Therefore, this project focuses on creating areas of porosity - knowledge exchange, skills development and cross-mobility - between the fields of law and architecture. Hawkins\Brown is a world-renowned architectural firm based in London and Manchester pioneering the creation of architectural projects that deliver both commercial and social value, effectively monetising social value as a means for creating more inclusive societies. A secondment at Hawkins\Brown is crucial for me to understand what social value means for architects. Critically evaluating their past and planned projects will enable me to gain insights into the economic wellbeing of places. I will subsequently apply the newly acquired knowledge and skills to tackle an emerging problem in my specialist area of research, space law - namely, how to use the new space economy (e.g. satellite services) to create more inclusive societies here on Earth. This is an area currently unregulated by law on which the UK government is heavily investing. The project will achieve four objectives: 1. Creating porosity between sectors: A secondment at Hawkins\Brown will allow me to acquire new knowledge on the history of architecture and the specialized literature on redistribution of social gains as well as develop my research skills through exposure to techniques (theoretical and empirical) needed to conceptualise, measure and assess the production of social value in the target community. In return, I will advise Hawkins\Brown on issues relating to the legal interpretation of the concept of social value contained in the Social Value Act 2015 and explore policy implications. 2. Boost the career of the secondee: A secondment at Hawkins\Brown will open up new career prospects for me by integrating me in the network of architects and researchers working in the field of social value and redistribution gains. It will also allow me to apply the newly acquired knowledge about the monetisation of social value and related impact assessment techniques to further research on the extent to which the commercial activities of the satellite industry generate social redistribution gains. 3. Produce innovative outputs: The planned outcomes of the secondment include: - an interdisciplinary research paper revisiting the concept of benefit sharing under the Outer Space Treaty (1967) in the light of architectural theory and practice. - outreach activities: a workshop in London to share the findings of my secondments with architects, social value researchers and the wider society; a workshop in Leicester with the academic and space business community. 4. Adding value to architecture as a sector The secondment will directly contribute to the conceptualisation of redistributive (social value) gains embedded in the design of architectural projects delivering value for money to clients. It will also contribute to the documentation and critical evaluation of a discrete aspect of the history of architecture in the UK.