Facadeclick as a service

Building facades LEGO-style

Facadeclick is a material supplier that responds to the trends for seamless, aesthetically perfect facades by using a revolutionary HDPE connector to click the bricks together in a facade instead of using mortar or glue. Thanks to the specific bricks and the inserts (these are the connectors) a facade wall is built as if you were building with LEGO®, without water, mortar or glue. Therefore the wall can be perfectly dismantled, the bricks recovered and reused. Circular, in other words.

In order to offer Facadeclick as a service, we want to solve three sub-problems, one by one: legal, economic and financial.

Legal: Today, a facade becomes immovable by destination. When building with Facadeclick, the facade can easily be dismantled and detached from the building. It could be argued that the facade can be considered movable. In this way, no property tax has to be paid and the cost price of the building falls. We want to investigate the legal implications of taking back material and the impact on property rights.

Economic: At the moment a builder buys his facade for 100%, after 20 years it is only a cost, destined to be destroyed. The Facadeclick facade has a residual value at the end of the building's life but how do we determine this value?

Financial: We are looking for a business model in which this facade can be put into use for, say, 75% over a 20-year lifespan. If the façade still has a certain material value after 20 years (for example 25%), the bank could financially borrow 100% to purchase this façade. Knowing that the residual value will be 25% that the bank will be able to recover. Possibly, in the worst case, the value after 20 years is less than 25%, and then the client has to share in the minus value, in the best case, the value after 20 years is more than 25% and then the client shares in the plus value.

The aim of the research is to elaborate and test these issues.