The building industry is blamed for consuming enormous natural resources and creating massive solid waste worldwide. In response to this, the concept of circular economy (CE) has gained much attention in the sector in recent years. Many pilot building projects that implemented CE concepts started to appear around the world, including Taiwan. However, compared with the pilot projects in the Netherlands, which are regarded as the pioneer ones by international society, many CE-related practices are not implemented in pilot cases in Taiwan. To assist future project stakeholders to recognize what the key CE-related practices are and how they could be implemented in their building projects in Taiwan, this study has conducted a series of case studies of Dutch and Taiwanese pilot projects and semi-structured interviews with key project stakeholders of Taiwanese pilot projects. Thirty key CE-related practices are identified via case studies, along with their related 5R principles (Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle) and project phases. Suggestion on CE-related practices, their 5R principles, project items, and phases to implement in building projects in Taiwan is also proposed while discussion on differences between two countries’ pilot projects is presented.

The strength of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in achieving sustainable buildings is well recognized by the global construction industry. However, current understanding of the state-of-the-art green BIM research is still limited. In particular, a focus study on how BIM contribute to green building design through building performance analysis (BPA) is not available. This paper aims to provide systematic and comprehensive insights on current trends and future potentials of green BIM research by analyzing the existing literature with their research features (i.e. research backgrounds, goals, methods and outputs). In total, 80 publications have been collected, analyzed and discussed. The results show that among ten main BPA types, energy & thermal analysis, green building rating analysis, and cost and benefit analysis are the most studied. However, wind & ventilation analysis, acoustic analysis, and water efficiency analysis receive little attention. Moreover, more research focusing on integrated design analysis should be carried out for optimal design outcome. In addition, most of the collected literature research on the capability of data integration and analysis of green BIM tools, while their capability of visualization and documentation has limited examination. Furthermore, most researchers utilized one main software package while utilization of information exchange formats (IEF) is limited. To increase interoperability of green BIM tools, how different BIM authoring tools and IEFs can be utilized for BPA requires further investigation.

This paper proposes a BIM-enabled method that assists in designing green plantation with a more realistic estimation of CO₂ capture than the current methods. For example, Taiwan’s building code provides an evaluation method for estimating the CO₂ capture of green plants. However, this simple manual calculation does not take two key factors into account, i.e., sunlight and plant variety, for CO₂ capture estimation, causing considerable uncertainty of estimated results. Recently, building information modeling (BIM) has emerged as an enabling technology for designers and engineers to make the best use of digital space for simulation of project tasks in advance and management of project information/knowledge. To fulfill the design requirement, the proposed method takes advantage of BIM to enable the sunlight simulation in 3D digital space along with a specialized plant database to help the designers select suitable plants for regions with different sunlight conditions within a building site. This BIM-enabled method is also different from the BIM-based ones that mainly take advantage of BIM to ease the design tasks under the current design paradigm and process.

This study presents a parametric modeling framework for estimating and comparing material usage and environmental impacts of urban building stocks in Taiwan. Building stocks play a significant role in urban energy consumption and material demands. Current limitations in building material stock estimation often rely on a top-down approach, which overlooks the dynamic characteristics of individual building designs. This research builds upon previous work by developing a parametric modeling workflow for analyzing building archetypes and urban stocks, focusing on two main phases: (1) building archetype modeling and (2) building stock modeling. The first phase involves the creation of digital models of common building archetypes, including single houses, twin houses, terraced houses, apartments, and apartment complexes, using parametric tools like Dynamo in Revit. These models allow for the evaluation of material usage and environmental impacts of different structural types (reinforced concrete, mass timber, and steel). The second phase extends this analysis to larger urban scales, where the optimization of building arrays within a given site is conducted to assess the total material consumption, carbon emissions, and circularity metrics of entire building stocks. The results highlight significant differences in material usage and embodied carbon footprints between different structural types. For instance, mass timber (MT)-structured buildings have the lowest embodied carbon intensity, while reinforced concrete (RC)-structured buildings exhibit the highest. The study provides valuable insights into the trade-offs between material consumption, carbon emissions, and sustainability in urban development. By integrating embodied carbon and material circularity data, this research offers a comprehensive approach for sustainable urban planning and design, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions about building materials and construction strategies.