Biobased Building: Supply, Pipeline, Demand | The Circular Economists | Q2 Meet-up | Rotterdam 🇳🇱
Biobased Building: Supply, Pipeline, Demand
The Circular Economists Rotterdam, Q2 Meet-up. Part of Rotterdam Architecture Month.
What the event is
Biobased building works in pilots. Scaling is where it gets harder. This meet-up looks at the gap between a promising material and a commissioned project, and at what needs to exist between the farm and the finished building to make biobased materials work at scale: routes into real projects, repeatable demand, supplier confidence, contractor trust, procurement logic, and the capital to back it.
The afternoon treats biobased building as a supply-chain and market question rather than a sustainability story. Materials from hemp lime and mycelium to timber systems, natural insulation, and innovations like biographene in concrete already work technically. The open question is what carries them from prototype into repeatable projects that can be financed and insured.
Who it is for
The room is built around the full chain, so the right conversations can happen in one place:
Supply: material producers, manufacturers, and biobased innovators bringing products to market
Pipeline: architects, engineers, contractors, and developers who specify and build
Demand: housing corporations, municipalities and public bodies, procurement leads, and asset owners who create repeatable demand
Capital: investors, family offices, and funds looking at where biobased building becomes investable
Anyone in the Rotterdam Architecture Month audience working on the future of the built environment
What to expect
A clear framing of where biobased building stalls today and what unlocks scale
Perspectives from across supply, pipeline, and demand, so the challenge is seen from every side of the chain
News from Circular Intelligence, including new ISO 59000 training and supply chain training
Focused networking with builders, suppliers, innovators, investors, and city partners in one room
A working atmosphere aimed at the practical question of what to build and fund next
Speakers
Robert Winkel, Mei architects and planners. Founder of Mei and the architect behind SAWA, Rotterdam's first high-rise timber residential building, opened by Queen Máxima and winner of the Rotterdam Architecture Prize 2026. Its cross-laminated timber structure is fully demountable and stores around 2,500 tonnes of CO2. He will talk about SAWA and what Mei is building now (15:00 to 16:00).
Bart van den Heuvel, Building Balance / Tekkoo. Transition manager for biobased building. At Building Balance, the programme behind the Nationale Aanpak Biobased Bouwen, he drives the national scale-up of biobased building chains from land to building, connecting growers, processors, and builders. He will talk about financing the transition and turning commitments into real purchase contracts, so the industry pulls in one direction.
Alexander de Bruin, Circular Intelligence. Leadership and gamification to move the needle on circularity. People want to do the right thing, and they move when the next step is clear. His focus is on making that next step visible and turning intent into action.
Alexander Forrest (Host), Circular Intelligence / Biographene Ireland. A first look at Biographene Ireland, where technology meets biobased building. Biographene is a bio-based graphene additive for concrete, and the company now has an investor-ready proposal as it looks for its first production location.
Tuesday 23 June 2026, 14:00 to 17:00
Van Nelle Fabriek, Van Nelleweg 1, Rotterdam
Free entry, registration required, 200 spots
Register: https://luma.com/fxzd4nl7
About The Circular Economists
The Circular Economists is an international community of professionals working on the circular economy in practice, with local chapters across Europe. The Rotterdam chapter launched in April 2026, and its first meet-up at Van Nelle Fabriek was fully booked, bringing together material innovators and voices from Regeneration.VC (large-scale impact investment), Fungkee (mycelium-based PFAS substitute), Oyster Heaven (creating business value while saving the North Sea), and WBCSD (building the Global Circularity Protocol). The chapter is a place for honest, practical exchange between the people who design, build, fund, and buy, hosted in Rotterdam by Circular Intelligence.
About Circular Intelligence
Circular Intelligence is a Rotterdam-based consultancy that helps organisations throughout Europe turn circular ambition into commercial advantage. It works from the premise that circularity is as much a commercial and perception challenge as an environmental one, and that most initiatives stall on readiness rather than technology. Its Circular Readiness Levels framework maps the journey from shared understanding to ecosystem alignment, giving companies a structured way to see where they stand and act on what comes next. Strategy, implementation, momentum. Current projects span helping startups prepare a funding narrative that sells, giving the Baltic Sea Region a policy roadmap that brings cultural and creative players into the circular economy, sitting on active working groups with WBCSD, and providing ISO certification.
Link: https://luma.com/fxzd4nl7