GRRR — Platform for the Reuse and Redistribution of Resources

GRRR — Plataforma para la reutilización y redistribución de recursos

Initiated by: Workgroup GRRR of Arquitecturas Colectivas network.

GRRR (Guide for the Reuse and Redistribution of Resources) is a strategy that encourages people to optimise and take advantage of resources, materials and ideas. A strategy for exploring a new collaborative, responsible, inclusive, pragmatic, coherent and creative culture with the aim of converting waste into resources and recycling surplus materials into opportunities. It’s a tool that is especially oriented towards projects that share the values of the Arquitecturas Colectivas (Collective Architecture) network. Its goal is to connect supply and demand between self-managed projects and public administrations and private institutions.

GRRR is made up of protocols, agreements and manuals, as well as a technological tool that will enable the creation of a map showing supply and demand, resource tracking and management as well as calculations and visualisations around the related environmental impact.

This project was started by a work group within the Arquitecturas Colectivas network and is offered up as a tool for projects that share the network’s values, such as the participatory and open-source construction of our surroundings, the right to the city, self-governance of spaces and civic empowerment.

It deals with creating and maintaining circular systems that keep the life cycle of materials going, giving them second and third lives within these projects, both meeting the projects’ needs and improving their self-management capacities. Strategies like this allow networks based on alternative economies and solidarity to be established, creating connections and synergies related to supply and demand between people with similar goals and values. Similar connections can also be created between individuals and institutions from different public and private sectors. This whole process creates a creative culture of transforming leftover materials into resources. If we understand the city as a supply quarry of primary materials (city mining), then new aesthetics and formulas of dignity will begin to appear and fill in the gaps of our collective vision.

In order for this to happen, we believe it is necessary to develop a complete strategy of protocols, exchange agreements and constructive solutions that allow public and private institutions to make materials available, to enable them to be managed and used properly and to ensure that they are put to use in processes that align with the values of the network. The latter would be indicated using a ‘seal of quality’. All of this must be supported by a technological tool that connects supply and demand, serves as a repository for all of the documentation generated and allows the projects and the life cycle of the materials to be tracked.

The project’s principles are based on the following values:

Collaboration (mediated agreements between citizens, administrations or private entities to care for and regenerate the urban commons)
Responsibility (a central element in relationships between different parties and an indispensable condition in order for collaboration to be effectively focused on the production of useful deliverables)
Inclusiveness (Interventions that address maintaining and regenerating the urban commons will have to be organised in such a way that allows other interested citizens to participate at any point in time.)

grrr.tools