RenewHaus: New products, no consumption

The idea is to invent a real, low-cost, circular economy. The starting point is a new way to design products, optimised for reprocessing in small workshops in the city.

Design

For this, instead of designing for style or production method, we focus on the moment the product needs to close the circle, and become a new product. This means designing products for repairs and refurbishment: easy disassembly, and parts made from wearable materials which can be brought back to new by brushing, sanding or re-laminating.
But the main requirement is to be able to turn a returned product into a new, different product, in order to meet current demand. For this, product are developed with modular parts, used and re-used in multiple products. Modular furniture is not new, but the local workshop enables another flexibility: modifying slightly some modules to adapt them to new products. Combined with a way to paint and repaints, this means that hundreds of different products can be made from a limited set of standard parts.

Retail

It also means that, as products used to be designed for packaging and retail experience with a priority on price and convenience, new circular products need to be designed for the return experience: with the same priority on price and convenience and experience.
The problem is to make returning a product as gratifying as acquiring a new one.