Publications by Célia Marine Küpfer

Pedagogy of an interdisciplinary, hands-on workshop to design and build floor systems with reused materials

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Peter Zurbrügg, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

This paper reflects on the pedagogy used for a series of student workshops on building with reused materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and presents the results of its 7 th edition, which focused on floor systems. During these w ...

CRC Press2025

Designing Waste-Negative Floor Systems Made of Reused Saw-Cut Reinforced-Concrete Slab Elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Célia Marine Küpfer

Building demolitions are often triggered by reasons independent of their structural conditions, causing the disposal of large quantities of reinforced concrete in good condition. Today, this concrete is, at best, crushed into aggregates, causing the loss o ...

Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH2024

Reuse of concrete elements in architecture: characterisations and design methods for sustainable structures

Célia Marine Küpfer

Because of established demolition routines and low construction-material production costs that neglect negative externalities, discarded concrete today is crushed and landfilled or downcycled as infill material or recycled aggregates, wasting its embodied ...

EPFL2024

FLO:RE – A new floor system made of reused reinforced concrete and steel elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Carefully extracting reinforced concrete (RC) elements from soon-to-be demolished structures and reusing them as load-bearing components is an emerging circular low-carbon alternative to building new structures. As floor construction typically accounts for ...

IABSE2024

Reuse of cut concrete slabs in new buildings for circular ultra-low-carbon floor designs

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer

The study explores an original idea that responds to the urgent need to reduce the detrimental environmental impacts of load-bearing floor construction in new buildings by reusing saw-cut reinforced concrete (RC) pieces salvaged from soon-to-be demolished ...

2024

Structural component reuse of precast and cast-in-place reinforced concrete in architecture since the late 1960s in Europe

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Célia Marine Küpfer

The reuse of concrete pieces salvaged from structures undergoing transformation or demolition into new architectural projects has gained a sudden and visible interest over the past five years. However, the practice of reusing concrete pieces in new structu ...

vdf Hochschulverlag AG2024

A concrete answer for circular construction: three prototypes reusing saw-cut elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Existing concrete buildings should be retained for as long as possible to reduce the environmental burden of demolition and new construction. However, when urban pressure makes demolition unavoidable, salvaging and reusing concrete elements elsewhere in ne ...

2024

From soon-to-be demolished mushroom column slabs to reused reinforced concrete saw-cut assemblies: the case of the rebuiLT pavilion

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Maxence Grangeot

The piecewise reuse of soon-to-be-demolished cast-in-place reinforced concrete (RC) structures in new structural projects poses new design challenges. Unlike the disassembly of prefabricated structures guided by existing connections, deconstructing monolit ...

Institute of Physics2024

Reading the existing: What discarded materials bring to the project

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Célia Marine Küpfer, Maxence Grangeot, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

Buildings are being demolished sooner and sooner after their construction. Regrettably this trend shows no signs of being reversed anytime soon. Demolition activities are driven today by real estate developments fueled by investment logics and rapidly chan ...

EPFL Press2024

Reuse of concrete components in new construction projects: Critical review of 77 circular precedents

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Extracting pieces of concrete from obsolete buildings and reusing them, as is, in new assemblies is today rarely considered a strategy for improving the sustainability of the construction sector. By delaying the crushing of concrete into aggregates and avo ...

2023