Publications by Maléna Bastien Masse

A standardized method to assess the reuse potential of building components

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

This paper presents a standardized assessment method to evaluate the reuse potential of building components, addressing the construction industry's need for sustainable resource management. The procedure relies on basic data about the assessed building, wi ...

CRC Press2025

An extensive database of Swiss building structures to predict the availability of materials and components

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

Predicting the availability and quantities of reusable components and recyclable materials is one of the challenges of a wider implementation of circular economy practices in construction. A detailed knowledge of the composition of past and current buildin ...

CRC Press2025

Pedagogy of an interdisciplinary, hands-on workshop to design and build floor systems with reused materials

Peter Zurbrügg, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

This paper reflects on the pedagogy used for a series of student workshops on building with reused materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and presents the results of its 7 th edition, which focused on floor systems. During these w ...

CRC Press2025

The persistent practice of reuse in the modern era: A survey of francophone advertising in Switzerland from 1851 to 1968

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

This study examines the persistent, though often overlooked, practice of material reuse in francophone Switzerland, exploring advertisements from 1851 to 1968 that illustrate a continuous and practical approach to reclaiming construction materials. These a ...

CRC Press2025

Analysis and Synthesis of Existing Procedures Used to Determine the Reuse Potential of Building Elements

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

Amid escalating concerns over CO2 emissions, resource depletion, and waste generation in construction, reusing building elements from obsolete structures presents a sustainable solution. This paper critically reviews 21 procedures used in Europe and the Un ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2025

Large Concrete Rubble as a New Structural Construction Material: Opportunities and Digital Processes for Load-Bearing Walls

Christophe Moser, Maléna Bastien Masse, Maxence Grangeot, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

Concrete is amongst the most wasted materials on earth, mainly due to building demolitions. Currently, after a building’s end of life, concrete is crushed to be used as replacement gravel in new concrete mixes or for backfilling. Aiming to increase the cir ...

MDPI AG2025

Digital Inventory of Swiss Construction Systems (DISCS)

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

The Digital Inventory for Swiss Construction Systems is a database structure that provides detailed information on component attributes in as-built load-bearing and insulating layers of existing buildings. The first version of the dataset provides granular ...

Zenodo2025

Disused Concrete, Digital Acupuncture and Reuse

Maléna Bastien Masse, Maxence Grangeot, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Stefana Parascho

Crushing concrete liberated from demolished buildings to provide recycled aggregate is argued to be a sustainable way of reducing material extraction. Yet, in these high‐energy processes, large amounts of new cement is often used, negating this as a low‐ca ...

Wiley2024

Upcycling concrete rubble into masonry walls: Design and assessment of two prototypes built with digitally augmented tools

Maléna Bastien Masse, Maxence Grangeot, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Stefana Parascho

Concrete rubble is currently a downcycled material whose upcycling remains under-explored and complex. This paper presents an accessible upcycling strategy to design and build slender structural masonry walls made from off-the-pile large demolition concret ...

Springer Nature Switzerland2024

Learning from North Americans: barriers and levers to reuse from practitioners' experiences

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

This study delves into the intricacies of building element reuse practices in North America, spanning the genesis, current practices, and future projections of the initiatives. Using a semi-structured interview method, 35 stakeholders representing diverse ...

Institute of Physics2024

Reusability assessment of reinforced concrete components prior to deconstruction from obsolete buildings

Maléna Bastien Masse, Julie Rachel Devènes, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

A large part of building demolitions is motivated by purely socio-economic reasons. Hence, about-to-be-demolished structures, commonly made of reinforced concrete, very often present no or little degradation. When adaptive reuse of the entire building is n ...

2024

FLO:RE – A new floor system made of reused reinforced concrete and steel elements

Maléna Bastien Masse, Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

Carefully extracting reinforced concrete (RC) elements from soon-to-be demolished structures and reusing them as load-bearing components is an emerging circular low-carbon alternative to building new structures. As floor construction typically accounts for ...

IABSE2024

How Gained Experience Influences Perceived Levers and Barriers of Reuse Practices: Learning from North Americans

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Barbara Ludivine Justine Lambec

This study delves into how the perception of levers and barriers for building element reuse evolves over time as individuals and practices gain experience on this topic. Three periods of business development are compared: the genesis of practice; the curre ...

MDPI AG2024

A concrete answer for circular construction: three prototypes reusing saw-cut elements

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

Existing concrete buildings should be retained for as long as possible to reduce the environmental burden of demolition and new construction. However, when urban pressure makes demolition unavoidable, salvaging and reusing concrete elements elsewhere in ne ...

2024

From soon-to-be demolished mushroom column slabs to reused reinforced concrete saw-cut assemblies: the case of the rebuiLT pavilion

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Maxence Grangeot, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

The piecewise reuse of soon-to-be-demolished cast-in-place reinforced concrete (RC) structures in new structural projects poses new design challenges. Unlike the disassembly of prefabricated structures guided by existing connections, deconstructing monolit ...

Institute of Physics2024

Reuse of concrete components in new construction projects: Critical review of 77 circular precedents

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

Extracting pieces of concrete from obsolete buildings and reusing them, as is, in new assemblies is today rarely considered a strategy for improving the sustainability of the construction sector. By delaying the crushing of concrete into aggregates and avo ...

2023

Low-tech methods for the reuse of reinforced concrete structural elements

Maléna Bastien Masse, Julie Rachel Devènes, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Nicole Widmer

Most of existing buildings are made of concrete, new buildings are being built with it and others are demolished when still in good structural condition. This drives increased demands for raw materials, greenhouse gas emissions, and an accumulation of demo ...

2023

Building structures made of reused cut reinforced concrete slabs and walls: A case study

Maléna Bastien Masse, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Nicole Widmer

Reuse of reinforced concrete (RC) components reduces construction’s environmental impacts and waste. Rather than crushing the concrete of an obsolete structure, its components are saw cut and later reassembled in a new structure. The theoretical feasibilit ...

CRC Press2023

Reusability Assessment of Obsolete Reinforced Concrete Structural Components

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Julie Rachel Devènes, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

The production of concrete, the most widely used construction material, detrimentally affects the environment. Obsolete reinforced concrete (RC) load-bearing structures, even when still in good condition, are today prematurely crushed and landfilled or rec ...

Springer2023

Environmental and economic analysis of new construction techniques reusing existing concrete elements: two case studies

Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer, Julie Rachel Devènes, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

As the most widely used construction material worldwide, concrete is the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions, material depletion, and waste generation by the construction industry. Typically, concrete waste is crushed and, at best, reclaimed into recycl ...

2022