Why is it important to study Matter Cycle in City?

Matter cycle is one of the most important biological and technical cycle to make a city self-sufficient. The economic and ecological balance of the world is dependent on matter cycle. Balancing of matter extraction and consumption should be maintained to create global self-sufficiency.

Flow of Matter in existing cities

The Matter Cycle or Flow of Things can be explained as a system of company-level energy and material flows. The matter cycle is a system of organization, people, activities, information and resources involved in providing a product or a service from the supplier to the consumer. This process includes of taking raw material, resources and components from nature and converting them into finished products. It is what links all the industry together and shows how matters are flowing from the industries and through the city.

The flows and links in the cycle are important and needs to be studied because they are the processes where consumption can be reduced for a sustainable future. The cycle can be studied and also be used for tracing back any finished products to its source, or to the source of raw material needed in the finished product. Some products have much more extensive and complicated supply chains than others. This is typical of highly complex systems that have a high number of material components or materials that are highly processed to achieve specific performance requirements. The industrial sector, as a sector that is responsible for the production of all the products utilized in the economy, is heavily impacted by the supply chain. A supply chain that is efficient, has minimal negative impacts and provides jobs will enhance the industrial sector.

Industrial systems are built on the exchange of materials and energy between producers and consumers. The industrial sector produces goods and services for consumers by using energy to extract and transform raw materials from nature. By analyzing the pathways and transformations that occur as materials pass from nature to consumer use and back to nature through disposal, we can begin to better understand the material requirements, as well as the associated use of energy and production of by products, such as emissions to air, water, and soil.

Modified flow of waste for optimization

How can it be done?

After the research it was about developing a policy that is suitable for the self-sufficient prototype. The policies are very basic, we don’t let any waste go out of the economy and we take as less as possible from outside the economy.

Physical transformation of matter cycle in a self sufficient neighborhood

Matter Cycle for Self-sufficient Neighborhood is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Master in City & Technology in 2015 by:

Student: Mohit Chaugule
Faculty: Vicente Guallart, Rodrigo Rubio
Assistants: Ruxandra Iancu, Alessio Verdolino