reducing co₂ emissions with demountable architecture

The new Techbank on the university campus in Enschede delivers on a sustainable promise. The building was designed ten years ago to be fully demountable, as temporary accommodation for the Amsterdam District Court, with the intention of dismantling it after six years and rebuilding it elsewhere. In its second life, after a period in storage, it now functions as a knowledge lab. At the time, developer DPCP took a risk, but the importance of kick-starting the circular economy carried greater weight.

Because of the large-scale redevelopment of the Amsterdam District Court, the capital needed a temporary court building in 2016. The client, the Central Government Real Estate Agency (Rijksvastgoedbedrijf), asked not only for an appropriately representative building, but also for minimising waste and maximising residual value. Development consortium DPCP (Du Prie and cepezedprojects) saw this as an opportunity to prove it could be done: a business case for a representative building designed for reuse.

Accounting for residual value is a prerequisite for a circular economy. DPCP therefore incorporated it into its pricing, even though at the start of the project there was still no buyer for the separate components. Alongside idealism, the conviction that one would be found was reinforced by cepezed’s refined design - a Delft-based architecture practice that has been experimenting with high-quality prefabricated architecture for more than fifty years.

flexible in time, place and function
Transparent glazed façades, a white-coated steel primary structure and generous staircases gave the temporary District Court a sense of prestige, even though the necessary nuts and bolts remained plainly visible. In 2017 it won Amsterdam’s architecture award, the Gouden AAP. Walking through the building, the jury said they were “embraced by a sense of calm”. They aptly summarised the innovative architectural principle as: “the building is flexible in time, place and function”.

The client, the Central Government Real Estate Agency (Rijksvastgoedbedrijf), was equally enthusiastic: in 2021, “the undoing of the first nut” was celebrated at length. The four-storey building was then carefully dismantled. A new owner had already been found and, after a period in storage, the building gained a second life as a knowledge lab. Kennispark Twente thereby achieved a sustainable first - the CO₂ emissions associated with building the Techbank are minimal compared with new construction.

95 per cent reuse
No less than 95 per cent of the original materials have been reused. The remaining five per cent related to the holding cells and a footbridge. The specially developed, demountable hollow-core floor slabs proved to perform excellently during the reassembly in Enschede. The layout of the floors has been adapted to suit the new function and, because the building’s solar orientation differs from that in Amsterdam, the solar-control glazing was installed on a different façade - two options the design had already anticipated.

The transition from District Court to Techbank demanded boldness from everyone involved. It has proven to be a successful step towards a circular construction economy. This time for a building with a public function and a commercial building, but equally conceivable for residential projects. The knowledge gained by cepezed and DPCP through the temporary District Court is now being applied to other projects, including a temporary wing for the Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam.