As a PhD candidate, you will investigate how construction professionals adapt their everyday practices in a rapidly transforming built environment. The sector is undergoing fundamental change across the entire building lifecycle, from design and construction to demolition and reuse. This project rethinks the built environment as an “urban mine,” where materials needed for the energy transition, such as installations and cables, are no longer treated as waste, but recovered and recirculated to enable more circular futures.

Your research will focus on how these shifts play out in real-world practice. Instead of staying at the level of policy visions or technical potential, you will examine what designers, contractors, and demolition actors really do when confronted with reuse, digital tools, and sustainability targets. You will conduct in-depth case studies of the key practices that are currently being reshaped.

Using a combination of ethnographic observations, interviews,...