About

As a Horizon Europe project, co-funded by the European Union (EU) via the Built4People partnership, Drastic plans to address the untapped potential for decarbonisation and significant transformation within the European built environment via the reduction of whole life cycle carbon.

Disassembly of a Norwegian barn for reclaimed timber utilisation.

Drastic aims to reduce operational and embodied carbon by engaging its collection of five Demonstrator projects, each based in distinct geographic zones with specific drivers that focus on reducing the embodied carbon impacts of construction materials.

Recognising the challenge

In Europe, the operational use phase of buildings alone accounts for around 40% of all energy consumption and 36% of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, whilst the construction sector is responsible for 50% of raw material extraction and 36% of generated waste.

Showcasing solutions

The Demonstrators will focus on improving the life cycle performance of construction materials from a holistic point of view, addressing the technical, environmental, economic, circular and sufficiency aspects of design, use and reusability over multiple life cycles. A variety of building typologies will be considered, representing up to 80% of all EU buildings.

Drastic’s Demonstrators will also look to promote innovative circular economy construction practices to reduce waste and environmental burdens across the entire construction industry, and will seek opportunities to upscale Drastic to a pan-European level.

Evaluating impact

This four-year project will develop a ground-breaking approach to sustainability and circularity assessment, validation and governance risk and mitigation, including revolutionising how data is homogenised, traced, and shared amongst value chain stakeholders.

As well as this, Drastic will use innovative technology to enhance data-driven tools for quality evaluation, thermal efficiency, automatic asset identification, multi-cycle traceability and social acceptance. All of this will be integrated into a common digital platform, available on the Drastic website as an invaluable tool and beacon of knowledge for all to use.

By addressing each layer of buildings, Drastic will accelerate the adoption of sustainable and circular building and design practices to help collectively shape a greener European future.

Demonstrators

Read more about each Drastic Demonstrator below, to see how they are contributing to the objectives of the EU by demonstrating the feasibility of exciting and innovative new technologies, methods and solutions within the built environment.

Drastic Demonstrator: Honefoss, Norway

This Demonstrator takes inspiration from Norway’s historic use of timber as a construction material. The project looks to pilot the multi-cycle reuse of structural wood elements to create temporary commercial constructions. The multi-cycle reuse of structural wood elements is currently very limited throughout Norway and Europe. The Drastic solution has the potential to utilise approximately 4.5 million tonnes of reclaimed wood from an estimated 0.5 million empty barns nationwide.

Drastic Demonstrator: Balaguer, Spain

Attending to the structural layer of buildings, this Demonstrator tackles two materials which can have the largest environmental impact within the built environment life cycle: cement and steel. With no established ecosystem for the disassembly and reuse of structural steel elements, this Demonstrator looks to implement and prove the feasibility of such a system. As well as this, this project aims to repurpose white slag (a by-product from the secondary steelmaking process) via its application as a supplementary material within concrete.

Drastic Demonstrator: Düsseldorf, Germany

Addressing the ‘skin’ layer of buildings, this Demonstrator will focus on developing a circular External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS), designed to improve the energy efficiency of both new and existing buildings. This external wall insulation system is typically fabricated from many different layers, of which the materials and components cannot currently be reused or recycled.

Drastic Demonstrator: Rapla, Estonia

Using circular principles, this Demonstrator will address the low energy performance of buildings via deep energy retrofits and renovation to their skin and service layers. 82% of dwellings in Estonia have low energy performance, with no current ecosystem to provide the multicycle development and application of prefabricated façade elements that would facilitate such deep energy retrofits.

Drastic Demonstrator: Saint Denis, France

This Demonstrator aims to prove the potential for the reusability of interior space plan products, such as ceiling tiles and partition walls, without an increase in price or labour time, within the context of an office retrofit. The reuse of modular office partition walls and ceilings is in its infancy in France and Europe; these products are currently incinerated with energy recovery or landfilled at the end of their lifespan.