Technological development offers new opportunities that could changedesign processes. The present study explores the possibilities of technologies likevirtual reality and 3D scan in the furniture design process. For this purpose, a cocreation process with help of new technologies was carried out from initial ideationto 3D modelling. Each tool has been characterized in terms of user experiencemeasured by questionnaire. This research validates a design process of furniturebased on immersive technology and provide some recommendations for theimplementation and improvement of this process.
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With growing environmental concerns, upcycling has become an important theme in literature and practice. Upcycling can help slow and close resource cycles through product life-extension. Cities offer opportunities for upcycling initiatives and seek to tackle challenges in urban solid waste management by encouraging entrepreneurs to create value from local waste streams in urban resource centres and circular crafts centres. However, little is known about what drives urban upcycling and which barriers and drivers occur. This study explores urban upcycling in the context of the Dutch furniture industry, since The Netherlands positions itself as a ‘circular economy hotspot’ and furniture offers promising opportunities and best practices for upcycling. The analysis of 29 semi-structured interviews with experts engaged in urban upcycling reveals personal motives, drivers and barriers. Personal motives include (1) a personal purpose to ‘do good’, (2) an urge to challenge the status quo and (3) learning and inspiring by doing. Key drivers entail opportunities to (1) engage in collaborative experimentation, (2) participate in cross-sectoral local networks, (3) develop resource-based adaptive competences, (4) respond to increasing demand for upcycled products and (5) make social business activities financially viable. Key barriers perceived by upcycling experts include (1) limitations in resource availability, (2) increasing capacity requirements, (3) negative public quality perception, (4) limited marketing competences and (5) an unequal playing field. This study contributes with a comprehensive definition of urban upcycling and a structured overview of key factors that drive and constrain urban upcycling.
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Due to climate change, rising temperatures lead to more extreme heat stress in urban areas. Last summer, there were poignant images of people looking for shade in cities. Trees are effective measures to provide shade and decrease the perceived temperature. However, trees cannot grow in healthy conditions due to the conflicting interests of the many functions and infrastructure in cities. Also time is a limiting factor; before trees are fully grown and can fulfil its various functions (shade, biodiversity, appearance), it takes not only physical space but also time. Alternative interventions, such as a pergola, can help increase urban resilience by reducing the negative impacts of climate change.Pergolas are known, for example, in more southern Europe cities. However, despite the described promising effects of the pergola in documents to reduce heat stress and provide shade, we barely see these structures in the Dutch public space. We all know the pergola as an esthetical piece in the backyard where it provides shade, privacy and contributes to well-being, but they are not widely used in the public realm.Next to that, there are few or no known preconditions for an urban pergola. The functions that an urban pergola can offer go beyond providing shade. The pergola might help reduce noise and pollution, provide a meeting place in a neighbourhood and support biodiversity. Since space is scarce in cities where many different interests come together, we want to explore the potential contribution of an urban pergola to different problems. Therefore, at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, we have worked on an urban pergola as a real 'boundary object' where we bring education, research, municipalities, and entrepreneurs across disciplines and sectors together to discuss the potential of such an object.For this workshop, we would like to show our first results of this interdisciplinary action research and continue answering the question: how can a pergola fit in the Dutch urban area? Therefore, we would like to explore the functions and forms of the urban pergola with stakeholders, such as municipalities, entrepreneurs, citizens, students, and researchers all from different disciplines. The desired outcome of this workshop is a joint proposal for implementing urban pergolas that can meet the versatile needs of cities and thereby make cities more liveable.
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Phosphorus is an essential element for life, whether in the agricultural sector or in the chemical industry to make products such as flame retardants and batteries. Almost all the phosphorus we use are mined from phosphate rocks. Since Europe scarcely has any mine, we therefore depend on imported phosphate, which poses a risk of supply. To that effect, Europe has listed phosphate as one of its main critical raw materials. This creates a need for the search for alternative sources of phosphate such as wastewater, since most of the phosphate we use end up in our wastewater. Additionally, the direct discharge of wastewater with high concentration of phosphorus (typically > 50 ppb phosphorus) creates a range of environmental problems such as eutrophication . In this context, the Dutch start-up company, SusPhos, created a process to produce biobased flame retardants using phosphorus recovered from municipal wastewater. Flame retardants are often used in textiles, furniture, electronics, construction materials, to mention a few. They are important for safety reasons since they can help prevent or spread fires. Currently, almost all the phosphate flame retardants in the market are obtained from phosphate rocks, but SusPhos is changing this paradigm by being the first company to produce phosphate flame retardants from waste. The process developed by SusPhos to upcycle phosphate-rich streams to high-quality flame retardant can be considered to be in the TRL 5. The company seeks to move further to a TRL 7 via building and operating a demo-scale plant in 2021/2022. BioFlame proposes a collaboration between a SME (SusPhos), a ZZP (Willem Schipper Consultancy) and HBO institute group (Water Technology, NHL Stenden) to expand the available expertise and generate the necessary infrastructure to tackle this transition challenge.
The climate change and depletion of the world’s raw materials are commonly acknowledged as the biggest societal challenges. Decreasing the energy use and the related use of fossil fuels and fossil based materials is imperative for the future. Currently 40% of the total European energy consumption and about 45% of the CO2 emissions are related to building construction and utilization (EC, 2015). Almost half of this energy is embodied in materials. Developing sustainable materials to find replacement for traditional building materials is therefore an increasingly important issue. Mycelium biocomposites have a high potential to replace the traditional fossil based building materials. Mycelium is the ‘root network’ of mushrooms, which acts as a natural glue to bind biomass. Mycelium grows through the biomass, which functions simultaneously as a growth substrate and a biocomposite matrix. Different organic residual streams such as straw, sawdust or other agricultural waste can be used as substrate, therefore mycelium biocomposites are totally natural, non-toxic, biological materials which can be grown locally and can be composted after usage (Jones et al., 2018). In the “Building On Mycelium” project Avans University of Applied Sciences, HZ University of Applied Sciences, University of Utrecht and the industrial partners will investigate how the locally available organic waste streams can be used to produce mycelium biocomposites with properties, which make them suitable for the building industry. In this project the focus will be on studying the use of the biocomposite as raw materials for the manufacturing of furniture or interior panels (insulation or acoustic).
In het project CW4.0 onderzoeken MKB’ers uit de houtindustrie en Smart Industry samen met de Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA), kennispartners TNO, HMC en Bouwlab R&Do en partners in hospitality hoe zinvolle toepassingen te maken van resthout, met behulp van Industry 4.0-principes. Hoogwaardig hout blijft momenteel ongebruikt, omdat het te arbeids-intensief is grote hoeveelheden ongelijkmatige stukken hout van verschillende grootte en houtsoort te verwerken. Waardevol resthout wordt zo waardeloos afval, tegen de principes van de circulaire economie in. CW4.0 richt zich op de ontwikkeling van geautomatiseerde processen voor houtverwerking gebaseerd op Industry 4.0 technologieën - met behulp van digitale ontwerptools en industriële robots. Uit eerdere projecten van HvA en partners is gebleken dat deze processen het gebruik van resthout levensvatbaar kunnen maken, in het bijzonder voor toepassingen in de hospitality sector, bijvoorbeeld voor receptiebalies, hotelmeubilair en interieurdelen. CW4.0 wordt dan ook uitgevoerd in samenwerking met hospitality-ontwerpers en hotelketels. Het onderzoek concentreert zich op 1) het creëren van een digital twin (=digitale kopie van een beoogd object of proces, om dit te onderzoeken zonder het eerst te hoeven bouwen) van een ‘upcycle houtfabriek’; 2) het realiseren en beproeven van secties van de fabriek; 3) het ontwerpen en prototypen van hospitality toepassingen en 4) het evalueren van de business case van deze toepassingen en de fabriek in het algemeen. Na afloop is er kennis beschikbaar voor houtindustrie om afval te verminderen, voor Smart Industry om hun digitale technologieën toe te passen voor upcycling van materialen, en voor horecapartners om waardevolle toepassingen te creëren van resthout. Het project is een belangrijke stap in de opschaling van industriële robotproductie met circulaire materialen. Het legt een nieuwe, belangrijke verbinding tussen Smart Industry en de circulaire transitie, gericht op het aanpakken van urgente maatschappelijke uitdagingen verband houdend met materiële schaarste en de mondiale milieucrisis.
