Pop-Up Exhibition – RAW: Designing Beyond Standardisation: The Costs of Circularity

Circularity has become a central ambition in architecture, engineering, and construction. While natural and reclaimed materials are key to this transition, their inherent variability conflicts with a construction industry calibrated for uniformity.

Rather than treating material difference as an obstacle requiring correction, the RAW project positions it as a design vector. This shift moves away from current grading and sorting regimes that generate vast streams of waste, toward a more inclusive material ecology in which what is now classified as residue becomes the basis for new tectonic and aesthetic possibilities.

However, circularity is not without trade-offs. While RAW reduces material waste and barriers to adopting circular practices, it also redistributes costs—across labor, expertise, and territorial systems. This raises a fundamental question: which costs are we willing to bear to enable meaningful transformation in the sector?

The RAW Pop-Up exhibition presents prototypes from the RAW research project, demonstrating non-destructive assessment, coupled with design and fabrication through novel digital infrastructures. Videos and designs build on these pioneering computational approaches to examine three sets of stakes: Material and Environmental Costs, Labor and Social Costs, and Agricultural and Territorial Costs—foregrounding how such methods both expand the possibilities of circularity and redistribute its costs.

The research takes place in an interdisciplinary and international consortium consisting of:

Royal Danish Academy – Centre for Information Technology, Architecture University Of Stuttgart (Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), Institute of Computational Design and Construction (ICD), Danish Technological University (Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering), Luleå University of Technology (Wood Science and Engineering), University of Innsbruck (Department of Structural Engineering and Material Sciences), OMTRE A/S, Leiden University (Institute of Environmental Sciences).

The pop-up exhibition is organized together with PUUSTER, including the Estonian Academy of Arts and University of Tartu. For more information visit: https://pakk.artun.ee/projektid/puuster