Implementing the History Stack: A Digital Framework for Circular Building Practices in Bio-Based Construction

The development of circular building systems necessitates the consideration of the creation, maintenance, repair and reuse of physical components. This paper addresses the lack of digital models to support circular practices in the built environment and proposes a digital framework – the History Stack – which is an essential requirement for sustainable bio-based building systems. A future practice for building systems needs a means for continued access to and adaptation of its foundational data. This includes the building system’s material sources, composition and fabrication, but also the underlying design and fabrication logic, as these connect individual elements into structures and an architectural whole. In line with the intentions of the EU Building Logbook (European Commission et al. 2020) and next-generation BIM-like systems (Bucher and Hall 2020), this collection should avoid current data structures, which are based on monolithic data models. It should instead embrace the heterogeneous nature of data on building systems and the fact that building systems are not static entities but rather undergo many changes, both gradual and abrupt, during their lifetime. The question is how a digital framework can support not only the wide array of architectural datatypes but also the practices that emerge within the lifespan of a natural material-based building system. In this positioning paper, we investigate the content, potential data structure and related practices for a digital framework – The History Stack – which supports a circular building practice by aiming to establish and upkeep a connection between the range of digital models that emerge during a building’s lifecycle.