Adopting circular economy approaches in a high growth, high-waste sector like the built environment presents a tremendous opportunity for businesses, governments and cities to minimize structural waste and thus realize greater value from built environment assets. It is time to reshape our urban future and move from principles to practices. During the session, visionary practitioners will provide their perspectives on partnerships are key to understanding and solving tomorrow’s challenges and why we must build back circular through cases and research. We must take innovative measure to source ideas for how we build back circular to explore and develop a future model. Therefore, this session will also bring into focus how we can work faster and smarter to bolster the circular economy thinking in buildings. In November 2020 the Open Innovation Call – Build Back Circular – was launched with the aim at connecting American companies or organizations, that have a challenge within the built industry, to be matched up with Nordic companies that have expertise and know-how within circular construction. At the session, you will hear about the co-creation partnership between Columbia University, BLOXHUB and a range of Nordic companies and be the first to be introduced to the concrete solutions and understand how local challenges, co-creation and partnerships are the new green.