In the previous video, you learned that to apply circular economy principles to the construction of buildings, we first need to understand the organization of a building structure and the life-cycle of its various layers.

To unfold the complexity of a building we will use the “Shearing Layers” concept of architect Frank Duffy, which was later elaborated by Stewart Brand in his book How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built (1994), which refers to buildings as composed of several layers of change.

Duffy and Brand identified the following shearing layers to structure the organization of a building (quoted from Brand):

Now that you understand that a building is not one object, but a collection of shearing layers, it might be easier to think of a resource reduction strategy during the design process.