Towards a Database of Structural Typologies and Construction Systems in Steel for the Components Reuse/Repurpose

Steel has always expressed great potentiality for circular economy due to the high durability, remarkable flexibility and excellent recyclability, which allow the total reintegration into the production cycle. Steel structures at the end-of-life therefore represent a significant source of raw material for new buildings, reusing/repurposing the steel components and exploiting the embodied energy incorporated in them during the transformation and construction processes. In the construction sector, the first application of circular strategies primarily concerned the materials recycle in the phase of building decommissioning through the management of controlled demolitions and the next reuse in production cycles. For reuse/repurpose, however, it is necessary to define new methods and tools coherent with the Italian laws. A useful preamble to start writing new systems of rules is understanding how much and what has been built of steel, creating a database of the most diffused structural typologies and construction systems in Italy since 1950. The paper describes the methodology of the cataloguing activity and its operational tools, validated on the collected cases, implemented with the aim of characterizing the steel components, potentially reusable according to predefined parameters. The work is part of the Project of Relevant National Interest (PRIN) “Buildings and Circular Economy. Steel from production to post-production. Law and responsibility issues”, conceived with the goal of expanding circular economy strategies in the construction sector through the development of practices/processes useful for supporting the design and management of possible post-production scenarios of structural systems and steel components.