Cir4Fun Hackdays in Milan and Guimarães map the future of Circular Furniture
May 28, 2026 — Cir4Fun recently wrapped up a series of cross-border Hackdays designed to bring the circular economy to the furniture industry. Held in Milan (28 to 29 April) and Guimarães (13 to 14 May), these sessions brought together a diverse mix of designers, manufacturers, and tech experts to connect the dots between industrial design, data, and real-world consumer habits.
The primary focus of both events was refining the project’s real-world pilots, ensuring that theoretical circular concepts can be successfully deployed across the furniture lifecycle.
Putting Theory into Practice in Milan
Hosted by design innovation hub OpenDot and guided by the Copenhagen Business School, the Milan sessions focused on mapping out the specific lifecycles of three furniture products: a sofa, a cot, and a locker. Looking closely at these items from the factory floor right through to the user helped teams figure out exactly how to close the loop through sustainable design and practical, pilot-focused frameworks.
The collaborative sessions started at the production framework, while the second day was more focused on the market phase. The different stakeholders involved in the consortium contributed to drafting potential circular business models, the review of the ecodesign strategies to select that whit higher potential for those specific products analysed and market considerations to implement engagement methods, to solve the barriers identified through several creativity methodologies.
From Big Industry to Local Communities in Portugal
The momentum then carried over to the Guimarães region for a proper look at how a circular economy works on the ground, balancing large-scale industrial operations with grassroots community projects. The focus was on furniture reuse and closing the cycle, visiting the several steps covered from furniture waste collection and sorting to wood recycling plants.
- Waste Management and Timber Circularity: The team visited an Eco-center to understand how furniture waste is collected and sorted. Then they kicked off at Resinorte to analyse large-scale operations focused municipal waste. This industrial perspective was balanced by a visit to Urgezes Circular (supported by Laboratório da Paisagem), a brilliant example of local circularity in action, focused on the practical reuse.
- Co-working on Pilot 9 at CVR: The team then gathered at the CVR (Centro para a Valorização de Resíduos) headquarters for an intensive session led by OpenDot to get Pilot 9 off the ground. Because furniture reuse, refurbishment, and repurposing can be highly complex, this pilot focuses heavily on the vital role of the public. Since manufacturing companies do not yet widely offer these services, Pilot 9 aims to test a variety of tools designed to connect local reuse centres and citizens, creating a reliable network for collecting and reviving domestic furniture. Partners used the session to explore these engagement methods, establish tracking metrics, and map out the next concrete steps.
- Wood recycling at Sonae Arauco: The next day featured a tour of the Sonae Arauco facilities in Souselas. This gave project partners a chance to look at the latest innovations in wood-based circular materials and discuss the honest, real-world challenges of resource management.
Real Impact, Not Just Ideas
The insights and ideas from these Hackdays will feed directly into Cir4Fun’s mission to make the furniture sector more sustainable and measurable. By testing these concepts against real industrial challenges, the project is making genuine progress toward practical Digital Product Passports (DPP) and eco-design standards that work for European manufacturing.
