The Impact Factory in the centre of Mechelen is a breeding ground for circular initiatives and entrepreneurship. The buildings already house a shared library for home and garden tools, laptops and seeds, an organization that grows mushrooms on coffee grounds, a circular fashion studio, and the fashion department of Ursulinen Mechelen. The upcoming renovation enlarges the ambition for this space up to between 150 and 200 workplaces in training, co-working, production and laboratory areas. The entrepreneurs will receive on-site support from innovation agency Switchrs. The ambition is to give the city’s residents the opportunity to co-invest in this local, sustainable project as cooperative members. The Stadsmakersfonds (a citizen cooperative fund) and the city administration, joint owners of the site, opened a call for the renovation project, with a requirement for the new building to be circular in its materials and methods of construction. Out of four designs, the proposal by WIT architects was eventually chosen.