CONJUGATED MATERIALITY: Reinstating Material Circularity via Digital Twins

Abstract

Industrial Revolution 4.0 offers an opportunity for the globe to rethink the meaning of building information that breaks the territorial borders of building information systems that are not based project-wise but follow a geopolitical structure. It expands the conventional thought process of being limited to a building to a city/planetary urbanisation level. As a response to the new urban design theory, the paper posits an approach that amalgamates “Design for Disassembly (DFD)” and “Digital Twins” which have gained traction because of “Circular Economy” and “Industrial Revolution 4.0” respectively, to create an information framework for the urban ecology that focuses on system management rather than project management via “Material Passport (MP) 2.0”. It identifies the gaps within the existing MP and creates a foundational framework for the added information (termed “Material Strategies”) that needs to be a part of MP 2.0 that arise while working across systems by augmenting DFD and Digital Twins via the lens of materials. The material strategies are further investigated through a correlation matrix to understand their interdependency to finally create a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)-based serialisation of materials to reinstate the material circularity and reduce the carbon emissions that the construction sector accounts for.