REUSE Circular Stories: Jan Jongert, an architect’s perspective
As a designer of interiors and buildings, Jongert works on tactics to enable the transition to a responsible society. With Superuse, he develops tools and processes and realises concrete projects that stimulate local exchange and production, as an alternative to transporting raw materials, products and parts all over the world, whereby much is lost unnecessarily. In this video, Jan emphasizes that circular architecture starts with rethinking the role of the architect, shifting from designing new objects to carefully working with what already exists. He raises concerns about current systems, such as regulations, procurement, and financial models, that are still geared toward linear construction and make reuse unnecessarily difficult. According to Jan, real progress toward circularity requires systemic change, where policy, market incentives, and design practice evolve together to support reuse at scale.
An architect’s perspective
Author
Kim Sinnige
Architect
Ir. Kim Sinnige has been working for the Circular Impulse Initiative within the CBE Hub since 2022. She graduated cum laude from the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft in 2023. Her master thesis explored the embedding of circular values into a Waste-to-Energy plant through storytelling, Material Flow Analysis and design. She completed her bachelor with honors at the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Eindhoven in 2018. Between her degrees, she has worked in architecture offices in Utrecht and Arctic Norway.
