A Preliminary Case Study on Circular Economy in Taiwan’s Construction

After realizing the serious environmental problems caused by current linear economic model, designers, researchers and policy makers around the world started to look into the possibilities of a more sustainable model-circular economy. And the construction industry is no exception to this change. In recent years, not only in Europe, circular economy in the built environment has also become a key focus for public and private sectors in Taiwan. Several projects aiming at constructing circular buildings have been initiated. However, the understanding of circular buildings in Taiwan is very little. Furthermore, how Building Information Modeling (BIM), known as a powerful tool for circular buildings, contributes to these projects for building circularity is beyond exploration. Through one in-depth interview and case study, this paper aims at disclosing the current development, barriers and future potentials of circular economy in building sectors and related BIM applications in Taiwan. The current awareness of stakeholders, key challenges and enablers for circular economy in construction have been identified. How BIM is utilized for circular building design, and its benefits, limitations and potentials are also recognized.