Reversible design in the reuse of the existing buildings. Experiments on public housing districts in Rome

European policies are increasingly driving the redevelopment of existing assets within the construction sector. The aim is to boost material and non-material resource efficiency while promoting circularity as well decarbonising. This contribution sees the refurbishment of existing buildings as providing a strategic opportunity to combine design for disassembly and reuse (at the building, system, component and material level) with a ‘life cycle’ approach. A ‘circular’ and ‘reversible’ analytical and design methodology is theoretically defined and verified. This is done by applying this methodology to concrete cases (public housing – ERP – districts in Rome) of funded research and using a set of indicators to quantify the achieved level of effectiveness. This effort reveals original perspectives on how the application of Reversible Building Design to existing buildings can be transferred to the national context.