Renovating and maintaining existing buildings often means dealing with incomplete information about the materials, products and components they contain. Yet this knowledge is essential when existing elements are to be maintained, reused or given a new purpose. Digital passports for buildings and products can make this information accessible throughout a building’s life cycle and support informed decisions about reuse and circularity.
The project develops a prototype of a «Dynamic Digital Passport Explorer» that links Building Information Models (BIM) with detailed databases containing information about building elements. Rather than treating this information as a static inventory, the system is designed to dynamically connect different types and scales of digital passports and to record changes over time.
This makes it possible to assess the circularity potential of individual components and building systems, while tracking elements through maintenance, renovation, selective deconstruction and reuse. A digital building logbook records their event history and helps ensure that information remains connected to an element and its buildings even when its context changes.
The HIL building serves as a real-world case study for developing and testing the prototype on selected parts of the building. The project explores how a digital passport system can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the existing building and support decisions for its sustainable transformation.
Data handover is planned for September 2026, followed by user testing in early 2027 and alignment with milestones of SWIRCULAR, the Swiss Circular Construction Digital Ecosystem, in 2028.