Since the presentation of the project in December 2024, Upcycling Trust, financed by the Interreg North-West Europe programme, has passed certain significant steps. The teams presented the project in Lille, Brussels, Gand, Rennes, and Cork, working in close collaboration with Community Land Trusts (CLT) and Organismes de Foncier Solidaire (OFS), as well as with local authorities like the City of Lille or the Cork City Council. Alongside these groups, several partners, including HABITER2030, have actively participated in the project’s development.
As an extension of this work, an important survey and analysis were carried out over two-and-a-half months, between October and December 2024, by Lucie Cambianica and Eoghan Horgan (Cork) to present different methods of renovation, and at different scales of housing. The presentation of this phase highlights rehabilitation projects applied to collective buildings, large housing units, individual housing units, and even to isolated apartments. This diversity of scale concretely illustrates the challenges of the project: to think about renovation not only as a technical operation but as a contextual, social, and circular transformation of housing.
Lucie and Eoghan selected inspiring projects from both partner territories and other European contexts in order to diversify and enrich the perspectives. They collected precise, concrete data about the architectural, technical, thermal, social, eco-circular and economic dimensions. For example, on the HABITER2030 side, the experience of the Solar Decathlon Europe 2019 and educational projects like the Méta Plateau Projet were valuable in terms of offering innovative, realistic, and adaptable solutions.
In parallel, several highlights punctuated the project timeline, notably a seminar in Lille in February 2025 and a large European conference in April, where the first advances were presented to political decision-makers. During these events, participant questions were collected in order to feed collective reflection on the replicability of the model. The next step will consist of interrogating partners about the precise complementary information they will need to take action and adapt one of the inspiring projects on their own terrain. This feedback will allow for the formulation of targeted responses, with an eye towards scaling up and structured operational oversight, in the perspective of future political recommendations expected in June 2025. As such, Upcycling Trust affirms its goal: to bring out a new culture of sustainable housing that is accessible, circular, and deeply anchored in local territories.
