Brussels Environment hosted the whole FCRBE team for two days of intensive and fruitful meetings under the Brussels sun on the 24th and 25th of June.
On the agenda:
The first Extended Partners meeting: The consortium met for the first time with the FCRBE associated partners who will give us a hand in reaching the project objectives. The project counts on 17 associated partners including building commissioners, research cabinets, and environment agencies... They will have specific roles to play in order to rollout FCRBE results, from sharing their expertise, to testing the methods of identification and extraction of building elements before demolition and their integration in large scale projects.
The second Steering Committee meeting: Partners shared and discussed the progression of their project activities through short and non-exhaustive insights on what happened in the last two months:
- Following onsite visits to date, 32 new reuse traders based in the Benelux and 52 in France have been added to the Opalis directory. 745 antique reclaimed and salvage dealers from the UK and Ireland can also be found on the Salvoweb directory. For a short summary, take a look at the Instagram account @1500reuse;
- The detailed report on existing pre-demolition tools, policies and resources for identifying, quantifying and organizing the reclamation of reuse elements will be ready and released in September 2019;
- Some partners are already brainstorming about the 5-day-long international Summer School in Brighton scheduled for September of 2020. It promises to be a great 5-day event to introduce students and young architecture professionals to work with reclaimed elements.
Two workshops on:
- The open-source method to identify valuable elements prior to demolition and organise their extraction to guarantee reuse operators’ supply
- New specification methods for designers and Commissioners to stimulate the demand for reclaimed elements and complete the material flow cycle
A first version of these methods will be tested in large-scale building projects across France, Belgium and the UK, from the beginning of 2020.
To conclude the first day, partners and associated partners were invited to have a barbecue at Rotor to enjoy the end of the day among reclaimed building material stock.
The FCRBE team will meet again on the 9th and 10th of October in Brighton, UK.
