Developing a Circular Economy Checklist for Designing Modular Buildings: A Case Study in Sri Lanka

Climatic change and its impact on humankind is increasingly evident. Being the species that brought about this devastation, our interventions are now needed to proactively and paradigmatically change production and consumption patterns. Circular Economy (CE) is one such sustainability-friendly goal that is gaining traction in the Building Construction Industry (BCI). Given the massive negative impact that BCI has on the environment in terms of resource consumption, carbon emissions and waste generation, design practices must be shifted from object-centric thinking to a systemic & systematic endeavour. Even though Off-Site Construction (OSC) and Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) have circular potential given their inherent features of resource efficiency, the question remains as to whether the Whole Life Cycle of a modular building is factored in, in incorporating CE principles in the modular building design. Hence, this study proposes a circular planning and designing checklist for a modular building to be characterised as a Circular Modular Building. For this purpose, a literature review was conducted to identify the Design for Circular Manufacturing and Assembly (DfCMA) checklist items and to consolidate the different terms associated with the DfCMA concept. Following the literature review, empirical data was collected from a case study of a Sri Lankan modular construction project. Given the rapid growth of OSC and its continuing demand, it is timely that more such mechanisms are injected towards incorporating CE principles in modular building design to decouple economic development from environmental sustainability.