Building the Future From the Past: Circular Design Meets Digital Innovation

ETH Zürich
ETH ZürichMay 7, 2026

Why It Matters

Equipping future architects and engineers with AI‑enabled circular workflows accelerates sustainable construction, turning waste into profitable, market‑ready assets.

Key Takeaways

  • Building sector leads material consumption, prompting circular redesign.
  • Students disassemble structures to create digital material passports via AI.
  • Laser scanning and generative AI enable scalable, buildable circular designs.
  • Transdisciplinary teams bridge engineering, architecture, and computer science.
  • Modular digital workflow transforms waste into creative, market‑ready solutions.

Summary

The video introduces a university course that fuses circular design principles with digital transformation to tackle the construction industry's massive material consumption and waste.

Students physically deconstruct existing structures, reclaiming components that feed into AI‑driven laser scans and digital material passports, creating searchable material banks. Generative AI then drafts large‑scale structural solutions for real‑world clients, while digital workflows guide step‑by‑step assembly.

Industry practitioners join the classroom, turning the demolition of a building into a hands‑on lab. The instructors emphasize that what once seemed a complex puzzle becomes a buildable product through modular, transferable digital processes.

By training transdisciplinary teams in these tools, the program demonstrates that circularity can be a source of creativity and a scalable business model, accelerating the sector’s shift toward sustainable, resource‑efficient construction.

Original Description

What if demolition wasn’t the end—but a design flaw? What if waste could become a resource?
Catherine De Wolf's courses challenge the way we think about buildings by combining circular design with cutting-edge digital technologies. Bringing together students from engineering, architecture, computer science, and beyond, the program fosters transdisciplinary collaboration through a shared language: circularity.

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