*3.1. Existing Design Support Tools for Circularity*

The 38 tools that met the four set criteria are listed in Table 1. They were inventoried during the period October 2019–April 2020. It should be noted that the list is not exhaustive, and other tools may exist, as tools and their features can change rapidly in this field.


**Table 1.** Non-exhaustive list of design support tools for circular building in alphabetical order.


**Table 1.** *Cont.*

When the available design support tools from Table 1 are situated in the developed framework and sorted per design phase and per design tool category (Figure 2), it becomes clear that some tools serve the same purpose and can be clustered. As Figure 2 shows, this results in eight subcategories of tools (darker coloured bars), in addition to 17 more unique tools (light coloured bars). Although the exact impact and role of each tool might vary from project to project, depending on the adoption by its users, the similarity among the majority of tools raises questions about the tools' effective complementarity in terms of goal and scope.


**Figure 2.** Framework 1: Categorisation of the design support tools for circular building per design phase and per design tool category. Tools that serve the same purpose and have the same target audience are further clustered in subcategories (darker bars).

From the review and the filled-out framework, a series of findings becomes apparent. They can be discussed per design tool category:


level of ambitions and project-specific information. This issue is further tackled in the discussion section below.

