Innovative Circular Building Design and Construction

Dear Colleagues,

The circular economy, which has become an international movement that aims to reform our approach to resource management, is intended to address global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. Today, the construction and use of building accounts for almost half of all raw material consumption and energy consumption. Applying the circular economy in the building construction industry will enable us to maximize the use of renewable materials and to extend the life of non-renewable materials. Thus, new circular building designs and construction methods have been emerging as the most critical and primary force affecting politics, economics, society, and the environment in the 21st century. The importance of sustainable construction, industrial growth and resource efficiency is recognized by the construction industry and has become a major research focus. Many techniques, tools and approaches related to circular construction have been developed and tested around the world. Effective circular construction approaches oriented toward integrated and sustainable development are crucial to the impact of policies and planning in national and international agendas.

In addition, the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Architecture, Construction, Environment and Hydraulics 2021 (IEEE ICACEH 2021, http://www.icaceh.asia) will be held during December 24–26, 2021 in National United University, Miaoli County, Taiwan, and will provide a unified communication platform for researchers in the topics of architecture, construction, environment and hydraulics. This conference will bring together leading researchers, architects, engineers, design professionals, product manufacturers, builders, and developers in various disciplines of construction engineering and built environments around the world. Recently, the fields of architecture, construction, environment and hydraulics are undergoing a discipline-wide transformation thanks to advances in computing, networking technologies, Big Data and artificial intelligence. The conference will highlight a wide range of issues in order to facilitate knowledge exchange, increase practical awareness and explore new ideas and thinking related to construction engineering, management, technology and the environment.

This Special Issue on “Innovative circular building design and construction” is intended to select excellent papers presented in IEEE ICACEH 2021 and other high-quality papers on the topics of buildings. It aims to discuss the roles of traditional and new actors in the supply chain to minimize waste and pollution by improving efficiency and keeping products and materials in use. For building design and construction, this encompasses everything from the design phase through building, usage and eventually deconstruction and recycling. This Special Issue is dedicated to improving current building and construction issues from a scientific perspective. Research proposals should focus on analysing building construction, its design, its implementation, and its effects, particularly investigation into reducing, reusing and recycling in building construction, with different topics of interest.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Prefabricated building improvement;
• Application of Building Information Modelling and Internet of Things;
• Precast construction improvement;
• Building retrofitting;
• Comprehensive assessment of building sustainability;
• Application of green construction technology and building materials;
• Building and construction quality improvement;
• Building environmental monitoring and modeling;
• Innovative building energy management;
• Limiting environmental impacts of construction;
• Deconstruction and reuse of precast building components
• Human–building system coupling and sustainable development;
• Industrialization development of ecological resources and environment;
• Reduce, reuse and recycle in building construction;
• Construction economic development and sustainability;
• Reusable building system;
• Simulation of innovative building design;
• Sustainable construction management;
• Theories and methods of innovative building design;
• Deconstruction and reuse of precast components;
• Building design for deconstruction.

Prof. Dr. Wei-Ling Hsu
Prof. Dr. Teen-­Hang Meen
Prof. Dr. Hsi-Chi Yang
Prof. Dr. Wen-Der Yu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.