Publications related to Rising from rubble - Leveraging existing construction tools for upcycling concrete waste into slender walls

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

Teaching Not To

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

Two design studios were successively taught in two schools of architecture: one at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the other at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, based on "A Global Morato ...

Taylor & Francis Inc2024

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

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

Contributions to rebar-to-concrete interaction and its structural implications for design and monitoring applications

Enrique Corres Sojo

Bond between reinforcing bars and concrete has been the focus of extensive research over the last century. This is well-justified as the functioning of reinforced concrete intimately depends on the interaction between rebar and concrete, as for example cra ...

EPFL2024

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

Reusability assessment of reinforced concrete components prior to deconstruction from obsolete buildings

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Julie Rachel Devènes

A large part of building demolitions is motivated by purely socio-economic reasons. Hence, about-to-be-demolished structures, commonly made of reinforced concrete, very often present no or little degradation. When adaptive reuse of the entire building is n ...

2024

Experimental and analytical investigation of shear-reinforced concrete and dowel action

Marko Pejatovic

Codes of practice can be overly conservative, particularly for the shear resistance of reinforced concrete beams with shear reinforcement when large loads act close to supports. This thesis addresses the topic by proposing a refined design approach based o ...

EPFL2024

Experimental investigation of dowel action in reinforcing bars using refined measurements

Aurelio Muttoni, Marko Pejatovic

In typical reinforced concrete design, reinforcement is designed to carry axial forces, but it can also resist transversal forces by dowel action. This is usually neglected for simplicity's sake in the design phase, but it can be accounted for either expli ...

Ernst & Sohn2024

Influence of model uncertainty and long term deformations in action effects calculation in reinforced concrete structures

Xhemsi Malja

Most codes of practice adopt a semi probabilistic design approach for the dimensioning and assessment of structures. Accordingly, structural safety is ensured by performing limit state verifications using design values determined with adequately calibrated ...

EPFL2024