team: Reda Petravičiūtė, Naohiro Miyaguchi, Roman Pomazan
IAAC blog link
The project strategically targets public housing as a place of densification and a source of urban mining, aiming to solve the problem of upcoming precast concrete waste. Therefore a circular micro-district design proposal is created, focusing on processes (new circular hubs, proximity of material distribution), materials (pre-cast modules with upcycled materials) and environment (bioclimatic conditions improvement), applied both in district and city scale.
tools: Grasshopper (Rhinoceros 3d 7), Hops, EarthEngine, Geojson, Json, Scikit-learn, QGIS, illustrator, Photoshop, Urbano, Wallacey, Shrimp, Decoding Spaces.
- what are strategic objectives of Singapore as a state to sustain the high-competitive economy in the future?
- how strategic objectives correlate with current construction cycle policies and goals of non-carbon future?
- what could be changed in the policy-making of Singapore to meet the GLobal goals of circular economy?
- Data mining with Earth Engine, Json and OSMNX.
- Openstreetmap dat about buildings is not sufficient and biased, thus in order to make a reliable dataset we have to clean and enrich OSM data with data from official sources or ML recognized polygons from satellite images,
- Data cleaning and preparation.
- Data creation with Scikit-learn.
- Data vizualisation for analysis.
- Generation of scenarios of neighborhood renovation applying the evolutional ML of Wallacey.
- Methods of overlappind map data with Grasshopper and QGIS.
- Methodology-development of scientific research project.
- Map generation with Networkx, OSMNX, Geopandas.
- Processing of complex-layered maps.
- Merging BIM and GIS to ETL
- Singapore resolves the housing issue by a unique approach of maintaining the Lion's part of public-funded residences that are leased for 100 years.
- Dominating part of construction materials consists of different states of concrete.
- Constant densification leads to material waste.
- Singapore is one of the main hubs of concrete processing in Asia i.e. importer of concrete aggregates, and the main innovation hub for reused concrete upcycling.
- In 2022 Singapore is downcycling 99% of concrete, nevetheless it is just a tiny share of imported concrete, thus the concrete waste issue is gradually aggregated.
- In 40-60 years the majority of Singapore concrete housings will meet the challenge of the outdated level of zero-carbon embedded emissions.
- Singapore develops and implements several schemes for the updating energy-efficiency of housings.
Distribution of lease end in residential blocks, future urban mining sites. Machine learning prediction of ready-to-recycle concrete.
To identify the materials contained within public housing and their distribution, we utilized a rule-based algorithm alongside a facade recognition tool. This approach enabled us to categorize 12 material sub-typologies within buildings, revealing that the predominant typology is the residential high-rise, which accounts for more than half of the total typologies' gross floor area (GFA) in Singapore. Through assigning percentages to each building type, we found that pre-cast concrete and concrete are the most common materials. Our analysis further highlighted that public housing has the highest concentration of pre-cast concrete, underscoring its importance as an urban mine.
Singapore requires a more circular approach to densification, leveraging existing public housing as sources of materials and for densification efforts. Our proposal includes three main elements: a densification strategy, policy considerations, and a design proposal focused on the concept of circular micro-districts. The initial question addresses how Singapore can transition from linear urbanization to utilizing empty zones. Our findings suggest that there is no need to develop on reserved land sites; instead, densification should concentrate on regenerating the existing housing stock in a circular manner, thus avoiding significant pre-cast waste. The map illustrates the current GFA of public housing in violet. By densifying future development sites (indicated in brown), we can achieve only half of the maximum potential GFA for public housing (shown in white), accommodating an influx of 1.4 million people.
To unlock the potential for strategic renovation, we must consider how to minimize material waste in densification processes and how to upcycle concrete. For the areas mentioned earlier, we propose applying the concept of circular micro-districts, which are implemented at both city and district scales. These districts are identified as existing public housing areas of various sizes that have reached a 50-year lifespan, although the principles can also be applied to new developments.
In 2017, Singapore launched the Construction Industry Transformation Map, which aims to broadly adopt Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) and introduce mass modular construction. To enhance the existing policy, we suggest focusing on modularity as a crucial aspect of circular construction in the future. Modularity incorporates DfMA along with Design to Robotic Production and Assembly, offering a framework for customizable prefabricated modules that integrate five dimensions: a variety of 3D geometry, materials, and nature-based solutions.
The material flow of prefabricated modules is demonstrated in a case study, where existing building materials were categorized into four groups: "recycle," "retrofit," "reuse," and "demolish." To improve building quality, new materials such as hempcrete and Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) were introduced to reduce CO2 emissions. The project also presents potential scenarios for material upcycling in flats.
Circular micro-districts will be applied across all micro-districts in Singapore, enabling a shift towards acupuncture renovation, contribute to a new generation of the Green Mark Standard with a strong emphasis on reuse and recycling, incentivize the Urban Mining Futures Market, and support the transition to a circular economy. Additionally, they will aid in refining concrete upcycling and its replacement with nature-based materials, helping to make the circular economy a ubiquitous practice and changing the traditional concept of 'business as usual'.
- Data mining and map creation. Python Source>>
- Analysis of data quality and map preprocessing with Geopandas. Python Source>>
- Merging geodatasets. Python Source>>
- Enriching datasets via semantic analysis. Python Source>>
- Merging and dissolving geodatasets. Python Source>>
- Preprocessing json dataset for merging, json to csv. Python Source>>
- Merging csv with geopandas dataset. Python Source>>
- NaN conversion in geodataset. Python Source>>
- Geocoding map from OSM. Python Source>>
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- Singastat
- Data.gov.sg
- OpenStreetMap
- Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Singapore
- Housing & Development Board (HDB) Singapore
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- Circular Prague
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- Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel. Fraunhofer IRB Verlag