Steel Structures Sustainability: reuse of an early 20th century steel structure

[EN] According to the EU's climate service, for the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, across an entire year. In the era in which climate change is a reality, the 3 R’s (Reduce, Recycle and Reuse) are more needed than ever. Steel, as a structural material has many advantages. Its strength, ductility and isotropy are well known, and the fact that can be continuously recycled without degradation or change its properties is really important, but above all, the possibility to be reused makes it more advantageous than other structural materials. In this paper, a steel structure built at the beginning of the 20th century is presented. The structure was dismantled around the 1970s and instead of being sold as steel scrap to be melted down again, it was reassembled in a new site for a new use. More than 120 years after it was first erected, the structure is still standing and in good use. Nowadays, thanks to the effort made towards the efficient use of energy in buildings during the use stage, the operational energy of buildings has been significantly reduced, however, it is still needed a huge effort to reduce the embodied energy or embodied carbon emissions for a resource-efficient construction. In this last point, reuse is of paramount importance as shown in this case of study, where the carbon footprint is obtained considering that the lifetime of the building has more than doubled the expected working life period.