Visit Gennevillers in Northern Paris, and you’ll see a newly built housing development. While this smart-looking 220-unit social housing complex looks understated at first glance, it is truly iconic. Because Recygénie is the world’s first fully recycled building.
Built in partnership with social housing provider Seqens, Recygénie uses a custom concrete designed by Holcim using our ECOCycle® circular technology – saving 6,000 tons of primary raw materials and setting new standards in circular construction.
6,000 tons of primary raw materials saved
World’s first building with fully recycled concrete
ECOCycle® circular technology inside
The vision
With populations rising and urbanizing across the world, circular construction is essential to meet growing demand for housing while reducing use of primary raw materials and waste.
As such Seqens’ vision was clear — to build the first housing complex using fully recycled concrete, and blaze a trail for the future of sustainable urban construction.
“We chose Holcim because they were the only ones who considered the possibility of a fully recycled building. They developed a solution that would allow us to develop a real estate project using fully recycled concrete.” Noémie Bernard, Director of Planning and Architecture, Seqens
The solution
Holcim’s Innovation Center in Lyon, France, developed the world’s first fully recycled concrete for Recygénie. A concrete with all its components, cement, aggregates and water, made from recycled materials. ECOCycle®, Holcim’s circular technology platform that recycles construction demolition materials (CDM) into high-value building materials, made this possible.
French building codes limit the use of recycled material in concrete, so Holcim ran a monitoring program with the French national organization for R&D in construction, Le Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (CSTB), to ensure the pioneering concrete’s conformity and durability.
This enabled the use of fully recycled concrete for Recygénie’s structure – its foundations, roof and walls – proving that this sustainable, ECOCycle® circular solution offers high performance, is cost competitive, and can be scaled as European standards evolve.
Architect perspective
"We're lucky to have met Holcim to work together and invent this new product. It's not just a material we've created for a project, it's much deeper than that, because it comes from existing buildings. We tried to avoid waste as much as possible and to promote the reuse of materials, including all aggregates."
Elliott Laffitte, President, A26 Architectures
The icon
Beyond Recygénie’s historic status as an icon of circular construction, most importantly it provides high-quality housing for its residents – and proves that sustainable, circular construction at scale is not only possible but is feasible at scale.
By reusing materials that would otherwise have been wasted, Recygénie shows how sustainability drives profitable growth for Holcim, and showcases our vision for NextGen circular cities of the future, which we’re building now, as the leading partner for sustainable construction.
Holcim perspective
"What's interesting about this fully recycled concrete project is that we're addressing three major challenges: decarbonization, circularity, and innovation. And we're leveraging these three challenges into opportunities to meet our client’s needs."
Flore Bellancourt, Civil Engineering Manager, Holcim France
