ABSTRACT
Industrial ecology covers the idea of closed material loops of production where waste and recycling are used as input for new production in a continuously closed cycle thus virtually leaving no ecological footprint. However, grasping material cycles of all components and materials of an entire building and its use is an immense task and outside the information processing capacity of a single designer or even a design team working on project basis. Actually controlling these cycles is even more unrealistic and can never be the task of architectural design alone. This means that architectural design should not be concerned with such issues. The integrated product deliveries (IPDs) in construction introduce a possible way to handle the complex material cycles in the construction, use and disposal of buildings after the end of their useful lives through the use of industrialised products on various levels of integration that potentially can be nested into each other through various tiers.
