The building stock as an urban mine. The case of the circular regeneration of disused buildings

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 decarbonisation. Objective of the present contribution is to define and implement a methodology to evaluate the materials stocks of the built environment in an urban mining (UM) perspective, to assess their different potentialities in terms of availability of materials and of recovery, for reuse or recycling scopes. Results related to one significant case study, representative of a special typology interesting for the relevant material consistency, are presented, in order to fully illustrate the developed methodology. 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, aimed at sustainability and resource efficiency, is theoretically defined and verified. This is done by applying this methodology to concrete cases of funded research and using a set of indicators to quantify the achieved level of effectiveness. The proposed approach and the presented results are very useful for the definition of materials stock for various building typologies and at different scales in order to support public administration and other actors, involved in urban planning and management, in developing interventions plans based on urban mining and circular design.