Building Circularity: Lisbon’s Progress Toward a Circular Construction Hub
In early June 2026, we sat down with Victor Vieira, Circularity Specialist at Lisboa E-Nova, the partner leading CirCoFin activities on the ground in showcase city, Lisbon. With the project now more than half-way through, we were curious to understand any progress, successes or set-backs that have taken place. Read our conversation with Victor below.
CirCoFin: After a year of work on Lisbon’s Circular Construction Hub, how would you describe the city’s progress so far - both technically and in terms of stakeholder engagement?
Victor: After a year of work, Lisbon has made solid progress at the pre-feasibility level, both technically and in terms of stakeholder engagement. We haven’t reached implementation yet, but we’ve gained a much clearer understanding of what a Circular Construction Hub could realistically look like in the city.
Technically, we’ve moved from broad ambition to a more concrete grasp of the materials, operational conditions, governance issues, and bottlenecks that would shape a pilot. The process highlighted that Lisbon’s challenge isn’t a lack of ambition, but the need to create trust and operability for reuse to work in practice.
On stakeholder engagement, we’ve built a stronger shared understanding through targeted meetings and workshops with public actors, experts, and implementation partners. This has helped clarify both the opportunities and the limits, as well as the work still needed to move toward a real pilot.
CirCoFin: Lisbon is testing a decentralised material bank model in a dense urban environment. How has this distributed approach worked in practice?
Victor: Lisbon is testing a decentralized material bank model in a dense urban environment. So far, we’ve learned that a fully centralized approach isn’t practical as a starting point. Instead, a mixed "phygital" model - combining physical storage and handling points with a digital layer for inventory, matching, and traceability - seems more viable.
The distributed approach has worked well as a realistic test, even if not yet fully implemented. It has also helped clarify practical requirements: selective recovery, temporary storage, traceability, acceptance criteria, logistics, and demand matching.
Looking ahead, we’re exploring whether this model could expand beyond Lisbon, potentially evolving into a broader network of Circular Construction Hubs. Overall, the distributed approach is promising, suggesting a flexible, scalable solution that combines physical and digital elements.
CirCoFin: The integration of circular solutions into GEBALIS’ social housing refurbishment projects is a central part of the pilot. What have you learned from applying reuse strategies in this context?
Victor: The integration of circular solutions in GEBALIS’ social housing refurbishment is a key pilot focus. So far, Lisbon has developed a pre-feasibility process to assess how circularity can fit into refurbishment and repair. GEBALIS is analyzing materials with the highest reuse potential, but we’ve learned that circularity must align with constraints like repair cycles, costs, material condition, speed, and storage.
A selective approach - starting with easier-to-recover materials - seems most practical. Internal public demand also offers a realistic entry point for reuse, allowing us to test circular solutions in a controlled environment. This process is helping us identify not just which materials are viable, but also the organizational and logistical conditions needed for reuse.
However, enabling conditions are critical: material identification, traceability, acceptance criteria, temporary storage, and clear reuse procedures. The main takeaway is that social housing refurbishment is a valuable testing ground, but it requires gradual structuring and close coordination. That’s why collaboration between GEBALIS, Lisbon Municipality, and SRU is vital for the next phase.
CirCoFin: With urban regeneration accelerating across Lisbon, how are you ensuring that circular construction can keep pace with development pressures?
Victor: Urban regeneration creates both pressure and opportunity. On the one hand, the pace of development and the need for short construction timelines do not always favour circular practices, because reuse requires time for identification, selective recovery, assessment and logistics. But on the other hand, the sheer number of projects already under way creates a real opportunity to scale circular construction if the right conditions are introduced early enough.
At the public sector level, some interesting examples are already emerging. In Lisbon, there are examples in neighbourhoods such as Padre Cruz, Cruz Vermelha and Boavista, where solutions linked to modularity, thermal efficiency and water efficiency are already helping to show how regeneration can be aligned with more sustainable construction approaches.
Sustainable public procurement is also becoming an important lever. The city has been looking at which specifications can gradually be introduced into public work tenders in order to create better conditions for circular construction, including reuse-oriented approaches.
So overall, the answer is not to slow regeneration down, but to make circularity better integrated into it. That means acting upstream, through planning, design, deconstruction criteria and procurement rules, so that circular construction can keep pace with development pressures instead of being left behind by them.
CirCoFin: Over the next couple of years, what tangible outcomes would show that circular construction is becoming embedded in Lisbon’s housing and regeneration efforts?
Victor: Over the next couple of years, tangible outcomes would include the launch of a first operational pilot with GEBALIS, Lisbon Municipality, and SRU in a real rehabilitation context. This pilot would feature a clearly defined material scope, basic traceability rules, and a practical route for reintegrating selected materials into construction.
Another key outcome would be establishing the minimum operational conditions for reuse, such as a material-entry protocol, temporary storage, and a digital layer for inventory and matching. This mixed physical-and-digital model is likely to be more realistic than a purely centralized solution.
Finally, stronger institutional alignment - with reuse reflected in internal procedures, procurement conditions, and coordination - would show that circular construction is becoming embedded in Lisbon’s housing and regeneration efforts. The real proof will be practical: a pilot, reused materials, functional infrastructure, and better public coordination.
Learn more about the Lisbon CirCoFin Showcase.
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