Europe’s REMADE Project Aims to Turn Building Renovation Into a Circular, Data-Driven Service

A new European research project is attempting to change the way buildings are renovated, financed and managed by treating neighbourhoods as interconnected living systems rather than collections of individual properties. The three-year Renovation Management for Adaptability and Disassembly Enhancement project, known as REMADE, will develop a neighbourhood-centred Renovation-as-a-Service model that combines modular construction, artificial intelligence, digital twins and community participation. Its goal is to make renovation faster, less disruptive and more circular while improving energy performance, comfort and social inclusion.

Co-ordinated by Dr Feng Fu, Senior Lecturer in Structural Engineering at City St George’s, University of London, REMADE brings together academic, industrial and public-sector partners from across Europe. The consortium includes 16 organisations based in Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. By linking structural engineering with digital technologies, environmental assessment, economics and social science, the project is designed to address a problem that has become increasingly urgent: how to upgrade Europe’s ageing building stock without generating vast quantities of waste or displacing the people who live and work in those buildings.

At the centre of REMADE is the concept of design for adaptability and disassembly, or DfAD. Conventional construction often treats buildings as permanent assemblies, making later changes expensive and demolition the easiest route when components become obsolete. DfAD takes the opposite approach. It encourages designers to use components that can be accessed, removed, reused, repaired or reconfigured. REMADE will apply this principle to prefabricated modular elements for building façades and internal partitions, integrating energy-efficient technologies that can be installed rapidly and altered as the needs of occupants change.

These modules could allow buildings to be upgraded in stages rather than undergoing disruptive, large-scale construction projects. A façade element, for example, might incorporate insulation, ventilation or energy-management technologies and be replaced without dismantling an entire wall system. Internal partitions could be rearranged as families, businesses or public services change. By designing connections and materials for reversibility, the project aims to extend the useful life of building components and reduce the environmental impacts associated with raw-material extraction, manufacturing and demolition.

The physical systems will be connected to a cloud-based renovation platform that uses Building Information Modeling, digital twins and Internet of Things sensors. Building Information Modeling creates a structured digital representation of a building, while a digital twin can be updated with information from the physical structure throughout its life. Sensors will help track variables such as energy consumption, indoor conditions and the status of materials. The resulting data could give renovation teams a more accurate picture of how a building performs before, during and after intervention.

The platform will also support cloud-controlled Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing. Life Cycle Assessment measures environmental impacts across stages including material production, transport, installation, use and end-of-life treatment. Life Cycle Costing examines financial performance over a similar period, rather than focusing only on the initial construction price. By combining these analyses with material inventories and project-monitoring tools, REMADE aims to help decision-makers compare renovation options using consistent evidence about carbon, waste, energy, maintenance and long-term costs.

The project’s technological ambitions will be tested through participatory action research and co-design at four demonstration sites. Residents, municipalities, social housing providers, small and medium-sized enterprises and cultural organisations will help define local priorities, validate proposed designs and assess outcomes. This approach recognises that a technically efficient renovation can still fail if it ignores affordability, accessibility, cultural identity or the daily routines of the people affected. Local knowledge, historical practices and community expectations will therefore be treated as part of the project’s evidence base rather than as secondary considerations.

REMADE will also experiment with business models intended to make circular renovation financially viable. Proposed approaches include performance-based contracts, modular product-service systems, leasing arrangements and neighbourhood-scale material banks. Under a product-service model, a provider might retain responsibility for a façade or energy system and receive payment for its performance over time, rather than selling a component outright. Material banks could record and store information about reusable building elements, helping future projects identify materials that would otherwise be discarded.

For investors, insurers and public authorities, the project intends to reduce uncertainty through standardised contracts, transparent impact metrics and high-fidelity building data. Reliable information about component condition, energy performance and future adaptability could make it easier to estimate risks and returns. The researchers will evaluate whether these tools can support financing mechanisms that reward long-term performance instead of prioritising the lowest initial price, a shift that could be crucial for bringing circular construction practices into mainstream renovation markets.

REMADE is aligned with two major European policy initiatives: the New European Bauhaus, which promotes built environments that are sustainable, inclusive and attractive, and the EU Renovation Wave, which seeks to renovate 35 million buildings by 2030 while at least doubling the annual rate of energy renovation. The project will measure whether its combined approach can reduce lifecycle carbon emissions, construction waste and costs while improving health, comfort, equity and quality of place. If the methods and tools prove replicable, REMADE could offer cities a practical framework for transforming renovation from a one-off construction event into a continuously managed service capable of adapting buildings—and the neighbourhoods around them—to a changing future.

Web References: European Commission CORDIS: REMADE Project; City St George’s, University of London

References: REMADE project identifier: 10.3030/101308946

Keywords

Building renovation, circular construction, Renovation-as-a-Service, design for adaptability and disassembly, modular construction, digital twins, Building Information Modeling, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, Life Cycle Assessment, sustainable development, structural engineering, European Union research