Parisian Pavilion Created with 180 Recycled Wooden Doors

As part of the recently completed COP21, an experimental architecture project known as the Circular Pavilion opened its many doors for exhibitions and public debates in Paris. Designed by Encore Heureux Architects, the temporary structure is composed entirely of reused materials: from recovered wooden doors and used wooden exhibition panels to discarded furniture and abandoned street lights. The building follows the principles of circular economy, an approach where one person’s waste is another person’s resources (which explains the name, Circular Pavilion, despite its boxed shape).

Currently situated in front of the Hôtel de ville, the entire structure will be dismantled and reconstructed in 2016 as a clubhouse for a sports association located in Paris’ 14 arrondissement. The pavilion is a brilliant demonstration of the architectural possibilities that come along with the re-use of materials; for example its understated façade is created using 180 wooden apartment doors, and the furniture strewn inside was collected primarily from landfills. The architects behind this project explain that an “improved focus on existing resources and materials would allow us to reduce our consumption of primary resources, as well as avoiding the production and accumulation of waste.”

The mindset that the design firm promotes and aims to further publicize with similar projects is one of firm social responsibility: “Today more than ever, architects cannot avoid their responsibility, their liability, toward the world that comes. They need, [to] imagine what will be tomorrow, and what tomorrow will be.”