About
The PREUSE Symposium is a one-time event that brings together professionals and researchers with a shared interest in public reuse centres. The aim is to present knowledge and experiences from diverse fields of expertise and to enable an exchange between international participants who share ambitions and face similar challenges.
What are public reuse centres?
In the context of PREUSE, we understand a public reuse centre to be any form of physical infrastructure to store and/or prepare construction materials for future reuse, which is supported by a public authority in some way or another. If you are curious about existing cases of such infrastructures and types of public support, you might be interested in the PREUSE Atlas of Reuse Centres. During the symposium there will be plenty of opportunities to learn from some of the leading examples in North-West Europe.
Who is the symposium for?
An important aim of the symposium is to cross disciplinary silos. In short, we welcome everyone who is interested in publicly supported reuse infrastructure, from whatever professional background. In particular, we welcome:
Public officials and policymakers who wish to establish or support reuse infrastructure for the construction sector;
Researchers who are interested in public reuse infrastructure from their particular field of study (ecology, anthropology, urban planning, geography, public governance, sociology, etc.);
Reuse professionals in the private or public sector who are involved in the actual salvage and reuse of construction materials.
Registration
Some activities allow for only a limited number of participants. Please register as soon as possible if you wish to participate in the entire programme.
Programme
Day 1
Mechelen - Lamot Congress and Heritage Centre
Morning programme
After an introduction on the PREUSE project, the main goal of the morning programme will be to explore what exactly is at stake when setting up a reuse centre. Three researchers will each elaborate on a theoretical framework to help navigate its political, social and ecological context.
8:30 - Welcome & coffee
09:00 - Opening remarks & introduction on the PREUSE project
Presentation of the symposium programme and a brief introduction on the PREUSE project and its main deliverables.
09:45 - The reuse centre as a workplace in a non-extractive economy
Lecture by Jérôme Denis (FR, Mines Paris - PSL, Centre de sociologie de l'innovation) on the often overlooked labour and skills required to maintain and reuse materials.
10:30 - Coffee break
11:00 - The reuse centre as a space for urban productivity
Lecture by Sarah De Boeck (BE, IDEA Consult) on public land and urban planning as leverages to make space for the reuse economy.
11:45 - The reuse centre as a public stock of materials
Lecture by Martial Vialleix (FR, L'Institut Paris Region, Université Paris-Dauphine) on urban material flows from the perspective of metabolism studies and urban planning.
12:30 - Networking lunch
Afternoon programme
The afternoon programme is dedicated to encounters with leading examples of reuse centres, and the people who have established and are managing them. During two parallel series of roundtable sessions, the audience will have the opportunity to learn from a large diversity of experiences, with plenty of room for questions and discussions.
14:00 - Parallel round tablesCycle A: Materials In these sessions, we focus on the materials themselves, and bring together diverse reuse centres which share a specialization. | Cycle B: Projects In these sessions, we focus on a single case study per roundtable, and bring together several actors who played a part in their establishment. | |
14:00 | A1: Finishing Materials With Hugo Bonnet (Cycle Up, FR) and August Smessaert (Materialenbank Leuven, BE) | B1: The public-private reuse centre: the case of Roubaix (FR) With Valentin Mousain (Lille European Metropolis) and Léo Pares (City of Roubaix), Romain Fine (La fabrique des quartiers) and Agnieszka Bogucka (PRESRV) |
15:00 | A2: Roadwork materials With Ronald Koning (City of Amsterdam) and Paul Lesieur (Université Gustave Eiffel) | B2: The internal reuse centre: With Lieske Oostveen and Mirjam Scholtens (City of Utrecht) |
16:00 | Coffee break | |
16:30 | A3: Historical materials With Paula Lage (City of Porto) and Lara Reyniers (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, BE) | B3: The temporary reuse centre: the case of Nancy (FR) With Jérôme Burtin (Maison du Réemploi), Arnaud Gauthier (Ajir Environnement), Jean-François Briche and Mathieu Collot (OMh) |
17:30 - Networking dinner (on registration)
19:00 - Public keynote lecture by Finn Williams (SE/UK)
Finn Williams is City Architect of Malmö and co-founder of Public Practice. In his lecture, Finn will address the public management of urban material stocks from a broader outlook on urban development and the role of the public sector therein.
Day 2
Brussels - On site and at COOP Anderlecht
Morning programme
After a day of talks and discussions, the morning of the second day allows for actual physical encounters with reuse infrastructure.
9:00 - Site visits of reuse infrastructure in Brussels
Attention: this activity allows for only a limited number of participants. Please register as soon as possible if you wish to participate.
Participants meet in the North of Brussels for a visit to the Brussels’ municipal depot for roadwork materials under the guidance of the city services. The depot is easily accessible through public transport from Mechelen or Brussels.
Next, a private bus will take participants from the depot to Recypark Demets, a domestic waste collection facility near the centre of Brussels. Project architect Yann Gueguen (51N4E, Alter) will talk us through its design and construction process and the particular attention that was paid to reusing building elements, spatial quality and workplace comfort.
12:00 - Networking lunch
Afternoon programme
The symposium is concluded by a series of thematic workshops during which participants are invited to provide active input and share personal experiences on selected aspects of public reuse infrastructure. The workshops are an active effort to diversify the perspectives of the PREUSE project.
13:30 - Parallel workshopsAttention: this activity allows for only a limited number of participants. Based on the participants expression of interest in any or one specific workshop in the registration form, the workshops’ hosts will extend an invitation to participate.
Workshops take place in COOP, Anderlecht (see below), which is located right next to Recypark Demets.
Workshop 1: A strategy to set up and run a reuse centre Hosted by Rotor (BE) During this workshop, participants are invited to react to the first version of a PREUSE deliverable aimed at assisting public authorities in setting up a reuse centre. | Workshop 2: The architecture of reuse centres Hosted by Bellastock (FR) and Tiphaine Abenia (Université Libre de Bruxelles) During this workshop, participants are invited to a discussion on the spatial and architectural quality of urban reuse infrastructure. | Workshop 3: Experiences from the European Circular[x]Change network Hosted by materialnomaden (AT) During this workshop, participants are invited to share cases and experiences of public reuse centres beyond the NWE area. |
16:00 - End of symposium
The full programme is available to download here.
Practical Information
The symposium takes place on Thursday 4th of June and Friday 5th of June 2026. The symposium will be hosted in two extraordinary venues, both reconverted industrial sites.
Day 1: Lamot Congress and Heritage Centre
Van Beethovenstraat 8/10, 2800 Mechelen
How to get there: Lamot Congress and Heritage Centre lies in the centre of Mechelen, within walking distance to Mechelen train station, which is served by trains from and to Brussels every 20 minutes.
Day 2: Site visits and workshops at COOP, Anderlecht
Fernand Demetskaai 23, 1070 Brussels
How to get there: Participants will meet in the morning on a yet to be determined location in the Brussels area. The location will be accessible by public transport from both Mechelen and Brussels. From there, a private bus will take participants to the second site visit and COOP, where the afternoon visits will take place.
Speakers
Finn Williams
Finn Williams has been the City Architect of Malmö since 2021. He previously worked to promote public architecture and planning in the UK through roles at Croydon Council and the Greater London Authority, and as the co-founder and chief executive of Public Practice. Finn is a Mayor’s Design Advocate for the Mayor of London, an international jury member for the NLA Awards, an independent expert for the EU Mies van der Rohe Awards and was a jury member for the 2024 Alvar Aalto Medal.
Jérôme Denis
Jérôme Denis is a Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Mines Paris - PSL, and director of the Center for the sociology of innovation. His research focuses on two main areas: data labor in companies and administration, and maintenance practices. Together with David Pontille, he participated in the emergence of an international and interdisciplinary community around maintenance and repair studies, notably through the organization of conference panels and the edition of several special issues. He currently works on the relationships between architecture and maintenance.
He recently published The care of things. Ethics and politics of maintenance (Polity, 2025) with David Pontille, and they both edited with Fernando Domínguez Rubio Fragilities. Essays on the Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Maintenance and Repair (MIT Press, 2025).
Sarah De Boeck
Sarah De Boeck is a researcher and strategic advisor at IDEA Consult and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. Her work focuses on space for economic activities and the principle of ‘no net land take’. She supports organisations and public authorities in managing public assets and guiding the transition to a sustainable economy.
Martial Vialleix
Martial Vialleix holds a project manager position in the Urban and Rural Environment Department (DEUR) at the Paris Region Institute. He is an urban planner specializing in urban and regional ecology. His work focuses on conducting strategic environmental assessments of plans and programs at various territorial scales and covering different subjects (the Regional Plan for Waste Prevention and Waste Management for Île-de-France, the Regional Forest and Wood Program, the urban master plan – ScoT - for the Greater Paris Metropolis, the urban master plan – SDRIF-E – for the Paris’s region, etc.) and on the implementation of the circular economy in regions (study of urban metabolism in the Greater Paris Metropolis, Regional Regional Circular Economy Strategy…). He is also an associate researcher at the Géographie-cités UMR 8504 laboratory, having defended a doctoral thesis in geography and urban planning under the supervision of Sabine Barles in 2025. His research aims to understand how the territorial metabolism approach is embodied in public policies, and how urban planning integrates material issues (resources and waste) into its tools (territorial planning, operational urban projects, construction site management, etc.).
