Creative Frugality as a Sustainable Circular Pattern in Architecture and Building Construction

The UN World Population Prospect 2022 predicts significant global population growth by 2050. This year marks a milestone in the Paris Agreement's decarbonization goals. In this context, the construction sector plays a key role, but conventional design approaches may not meet environmental objectives. Therefore, a paradigm shift towards sustainable design is necessary to construct buildings that meet diverse user needs. This new design paradigm should follow the Triple Bottom Line approach to sustainability, offering environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable architectural and technological solutions. To address these problems, it could be necessary to minimize the use of resources, simplify the building design and seek the buildings' longest durability. These concepts are the basis of an emerging technological paradigm called frugal innovation, which aims to foster innovation in a resource-constrained scenario. To date, this is still relatively unexplored in the building and construction sector as a formalized paradigm. However, frugality is a concept that has been associated with architecture for centuries, and there are many frugal architectures built using local materials, local workers, and creative low-technology design solutions to allow for self-construction and self-maintenance. Furthermore, often, these architectures naturally feature flexibility, adaptability, and sometimes disassemblability. These features are increasingly recognized as enablers of a more circular and sustainable industry. This paper aims to investigate the role of creative frugality in sustainable constructions to meet the growing housing demand. The methodology involves studying frugal architecture, focusing on resource optimization as well as flexibility, adaptability, and disassemblability strategies. Additionally, case studies of frugal architectures are analyzed to showcase technological systems and material choices. The key research findings include the importance of establishing sustainable circular practices in low-technology buildings enabled by the concepts of flexibility, adaptability, and disassemblability. Enabling such practices can extend a building's lifespan and reduce costs over its operational lifetime.