Workshop in Villars-sur-Var, Alpes-Maritimes
In Villars-sur-Var, ZYRCLO is taking shape in a workshop where materials, skills and uses meet. A place designed to transform existing resources, to make things that last, and to try out new ways of producing at the scale of a rural area.
Before it housed any production at all, the workshop was itself a piece of experiment. Building on a former industrial brownfield site rather than taking new land, bringing in reclaimed materials, favouring bio-based or low-impact materials, and setting a demanding environmental bar: every choice was questioned at the scale of the project.
The building went up without applying a ready-made recipe: reusing where reuse made sense, choosing materials for their qualities and their use, and finding the right balance between building frugally, comfort, and environmental performance.
A forecast, to be measured and consolidated as the activity is rolled out.
The Bâtiments Durables Méditerranéens scheme (BDM, Mediterranean Sustainable Buildings) looks at the environmental performance of a building as a whole: materials, energy, comfort, use, and how it sits in its area. Committed to the scheme from the design stage, the ZYRCLO workshop was awarded Gold level by the BDM design panel on 26 June 2025.
Before transforming anything, ZYRCLO looks at what is already available: materials, components or equipment that can be reused, put back into working order, or transformed.
The point is to send each resource down the path that preserves as much of its usefulness and value as possible. Transforming comes in only when it is the best answer.
Locate the materials, components and equipment available, understand where they come from, what they are and what condition they are in, to see what they can still do.
Not every resource calls for the same answer. Assessing them shows which path fits their condition and the use intended: reuse, repair, refurbishment or transformation.
Once their destination is settled, resources are prepared accordingly: put back into order, adapted, refurbished, or made ready for transformation.
When transformation is the right call, each material follows a path suited to what it is and to the use it is headed for.
Reclaimed wood, recycled plastic and other secondary materials are not worked the same way, nor for the same purposes. In the workshop they are prepared and transformed, then built into solutions designed and made for uses we have identified.
Furniture, fittings or components: at ZYRCLO, making is not an end in itself. It answers a need we have identified, and it happens when it is the best answer.
But a need does not necessarily lead to making something new. Reusing, repairing, adapting or refurbishing can meet the same need while extending the life of what is already there.
The aim is to keep the use value of products and materials alive as long as possible, to draw less on virgin resources, and to push back the moment they become waste.
At ZYRCLO, making is not the end of the story. Furniture is designed to stay useful over time: to be maintained, repaired, adapted to new uses, refurbished or put back into circulation rather than replaced.
Services are therefore part of the business in their own right. They support changes in use, extend the life of products, and preserve value already created for as long as possible.
This is also what the functional and cooperative economy (EFC) means in practice: gradually resting value creation less on selling more volume than on quality of use, on duration, and on services rendered over time.
Another way, for ZYRCLO, of reconciling a viable business with using less.
THE ZYRCLO MODEL
Wood from strip-outs, reuse, and assessed offcuts.
Plastic collected, sorted and prepared for reuse.
Metals, textiles, foams, composites and more.
Every resource is identified, assessed and directed towards the most fitting answer.
Meet a need today. Let it change tomorrow.
The service loopExtending use and value
Preserve the qualities and the lifespan.
Put back into order rather than replace.
Change it for new uses.
Bring back up to standard to extend the life.
Extend the use elsewhere, or otherwise.
When use can no longer be extended, we move into the material loop.
The material loopPreserving the material and its qualities
Less replacing. More lasting. More value.
Before it became a workshop, the place went through its own transformation. Decontamination, rehabilitation of what stood there, construction and fitting out: the build tells the story of a former industrial brownfield site becoming a new place of production.
The build is moving forward, ideas are taking shape, partnerships are forming. Follow ZYRCLO as the project unfolds.
