Visit the Drastic project website to learn more about Drastic, its Demonstrators and partners. 

Drastic General Assembly

Drastic stakeholders gathered in Paris, France, earlier this month for the project’s General Assembly.  

With project partners attending from across Europe, the three-day agenda comprised a mix of collaborative workshops, team activities and invigorating strategic discussions under the theme of digitalisation. Agenda highlights included: 

Key discussions 

• Exploration of circular business models and reuse quality
• The visibility of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data
• Examination of whole life carbon (WLC) performance challenges across Demonstrator projects
• Review of current Demonstrator outcomes 

Practical activities 

• Demonstration of ceiling tile-packing reuse logistics, plus a used tile quality evaluation exercise
• Application of tools to prioritise innovation
• A site visit to Saint-Gobain’s Placoplatre plasterboard plant 

The next Drastic General Assembly will be held in Spain in November 2025.  

Visit Drastic’s LinkedIn page for detailed updates from each day of the General Assembly. 

Drastic website now complete!  

Are you keen to dive deeper into the Drastic project and learn how it’s helping to increase circularity within the European built environment? Then look no further! 

Final updates to the Drastic website have been completed, offering an online space for the project to showcase varied, innovative solutions to increase circularity and reduce whole life carbon and climate impact across Europe’s entire construction value chain 

Explore the Drastic website to gain fascinating insights into the project, including: 

• Demonstrator deep-dives
• Project news and events
• Learn more about Drastic’s partners
• Interactive project stakeholder mapping 

The Resource library section has also been expanded, where a wide range of free tools and insights can be downloaded, such as: 

• Decision trees
• Data collection protocols
• Research on grading reclaimed timber, and more 

And of course, the website will continue to grow and expand alongside the project, so be sure to visit frequently for all the latest project news and information.   

Visit Drastic’s website to learn more. 

Drastic's French Demonstrator — scaling up circular office retrofits 

Drastic’s French demonstrator (led by Saint-Gobain Solutions France, Saint-Gobain Research Paris, Coramine, Ecophon and Icade) aims to increase the reuse of office space plan products by identifying a business model that allows for the fast market uptake of circular, reusable products.

In June 2024, Clipper Coramine conducted the first dismantling and testing process of modular office partitions in an Icade office building in Plessis Robinson, Paris.150m2 of opaque glass wool and plasterboard partitions were dismantled and packaged for storage in Clipper Coramine's workshop, where they will be refurbished for reuse in another office building later this year, thereby helping to test the Demonstrator’s circular office solution.

Saint-Gobain Research Paris will also conduct further testing on some of the harvested materials, to verify and control their mechanical and acoustic properties for future reuse. So far, a 100% reusability rate has been predicted.

The Parisian retrofit cycle in office buildings is approximately six years, with most ceilings and tiles being landfilled or incinerated for energy recovery at the end of their life. Reusing these products on a large scale could support the necessary decarbonisation of the European built environment and a transition to using more circular practices within the office retrofit sector.

Learn more about Drastic’s French Demonstrator.

Introducing Drastic's new Data Protocol: Standardising Multi-Cycle Sustainability Assessments

Drastic partners Caala, Madaster, VITO and Tecnalia have recently created a unified data protocol to standardise how multi-life cycle data is collected, assessed, and compared across the Demonstrator projects.

In the context of multiple Demonstrators that use varied sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs), data formats, and methodologies, the ability to compare and consolidate results can be significantly hindered. This lack of standardisation can compromise the accuracy and utility of sustainability assessments.

Drastic’s Data Protocol (project deliverable D2.2), developed by Caala with support from the aforementioned partners, addresses this issue via a unified framework for consistent data collection and calculation. It supports Multi-cycle Life Cycle Assessments (MLCA) and Multi-cycle Life Cycle Costing (MLCC) by enabling structured, comparable, and efficient data processing.

Protocol objectives include:

• The streamlining of data collection across Drastic’s Demonstrators
• Ensuring consistency in data formats and methodologies
• Guiding stakeholders in data prioritisation and use
• Promoting awareness of the importance of multi-cycle sustainability assessments

What makes this Data Protocol truly unique is its multi-cycle focus—capturing the value of materials that are reused, recycled, or repurposed across lifecycles, supporting circularity through both simplified and detailed assessments.

Download Drastic’s Data Collection Protocol for Multicycle Sustainability and Circularity Assessment paper here.

Introducing Drastic's Design Guidance and Assessment Framework 

A recent publication; Drastic’s Design Guidance Framework Based on Multi-cycle Sustainability and Circularity Assessment, is now also available to the public via the Drastic website.

This foundational document was developed by Drastic’s project coordinator, VITO, in collaboration with project partners Tecnalia, WorldGBC, Madaster and Caala.  

The framework is designed to support building product developers, architects, real estate developers, and environmental assessors in embedding circularity, sufficiency, and multi-cycle sustainability into their design and assessment processes. It integrates existing frameworks and indicators into a cohesive and practical decision tree. 

The core concepts of the framework are: 

• Circularity: maximise material and building value through circular strategies such as reuse, repair, and remanufacturing
• Sufficiency: minimise resource demand while ensuring well-being within planetary boundaries
• Multi-cycle life cycle approach: extending product life by employing cascading circular strategies throughout various life cycle stages

Currently, the framework is being applied across the five Drastic Demonstrator pilot projects, with the aim of reducing whole life carbon emissions and promoting circular practices in the built environment.

The framework will be used to assess the pilot projects on a regular basis, validating their effectiveness in reducing total environmental impacts and total life cycle costs while enhancing levels of circularity. 
  
The framework is designed to support building product developers, architects, real estate developers, and environmental assessors in embedding circularity, sufficiency, and multi-cycle sustainability into their design and assessment processes. It integrates existing frameworks and indicators into a cohesive and practical decision tree. 

Download Drastic’s Design Guidance Framework Based on Multi-cycle Sustainability and Circularity Assessment here.

Drastic partners submitted for Construction 21 International Green Solution Awards 2024-2025

The video above details the Ice Box Challenge process.  

Drastic Norwegian Demonstrator partners, Produktif and Omtre, participated in the Ice Box Challenge last summer in Oslo, Norway, to showcase the benefits of Passive House and circular construction. Their submission for the Ice Box Challenge has now been entered into the prestigious Construction 21 International Green Solution Awards 2024-2025.

For the challenge, two mini-houses were built — one following the Norwegian national code and the other using the energy-efficient Passive House standard. On 19 May 2024, a one-tonne ice block was placed in each house to test insulation performance. After 33 days, the Passive House unit retained 150 kg of ice, while the standard unit’s ice had melted entirely within just 11 days!

This challenge highlighted the potential of circular design, with the Passive House ‘mini-house’ providing a platform for Produktif and Omtre to test their innovations ahead of work beginning on the Norwegian Drastic Demonstrator project.

The Passive House architecture included the Design for Assembly and Disassembly (DFAD) methodology and a ‘C-Joint’ system from Produktif and was clad in repurposed Norwegian barn planks and waste wood harvested, sorted and supplied by Omtre.

The event, co-organised by Produktif, was honored by the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Astrid of Belgium, who re-opened the mini-houses on June 19 2024, revealing the remarkable results.

Results of the award will be announced in July — follow Drastic's LinkedIn page for the latest updates and news of the announcement!

Learn more about Construction 21’s Green Solutions Awards 2024-2025.

Timbeco’s Project Manager wins Young Civil Engineer 2024 Award

Eero Nigumann, project manager at Timbeco (one of Drastic’s Estonian project partners) was awarded the Young Civil Engineer 2024 prize by the Estonian Civil Engineers Union at the Ehitus 2025+: "New or Old?" Conference on 27 November 2024.

At the conference, Eero gave an overview of his experience with prefabricated circular design including solutions developed in Drive 0 EU H2020  and work completed under the Drastic project so far.

Exemplified by his work on Drastic, Eero has made significant contributions towards developing and increasing circularity in the built environment, via product and process development and by writing research articles on the circular renovation of apartment buildings using additional prefabricated insulation elements. 
 
Eero has shared his results and experience at various international conferences and trainings, and has also been a guest lecturer at TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology (a further Estonian Drastic project partner) for the last  seven years, where he has contributed to the education of civil engineers and encouraged students to continue their higher education in the field of construction.

Eero also played a key role in Timbeco's recognition as the most sustainable company in Estonia in 2022.

On behalf of Drastic, Eero oversees all day-to-day project management of the Estonian Demonstrator’s mission to validate a complete deep energy renovation of an apartment building in Rapla, Estonia, using innovative circular principles to reduce the building’s overall energy consumption and paving the way for other Northern-European apartment buildings to adopt similar practices.

Congratulations, Eero! You can read the full article about Eero's distinguished award here.