Design Solution · Sustainability
Design Solution · Dream about it
Retain/reclaim/reuse existing fabric; minimise demolition.
Existing elements are retained, reclaimed and reused, with demolition minimised or avoided, and a whole-life carbon assessment steers low-carbon material procurement. Keeping material in use cuts both embodied carbon and waste.
This approach prescribes retaining, reclaiming and reusing existing building fabric wherever possible, backed by a whole-life carbon assessment to steer procurement, with the aim of keeping material in use rather than sending it to waste or landfill. The carbon logic is well-grounded in published research: embodied carbon in demolition and new material production typically outweighs operational savings over most building lifetimes, and retention genuinely avoids a large carbon cost. The record provides no evidence of a completed project, so the practical carbon savings, costs and programme impacts are not substantiated here. What a specifier needs to think carefully about is the gap between retention as a stated aspiration and retention as a technically and commercially viable outcome on a specific project: existing materials must be surveyed for condition, asbestos, structural capacity and compatibility with the new design, and the cost of careful deconstruction and storage often exceeds the cost of equivalent new material — particularly for non-structural elements. Whole-life carbon assessments are also only as useful as the methodology and boundaries applied, and without a consistent accounting framework across the supply chain the numbers can be manipulated to support whatever outcome is preferred.
#circular economy #reuse #whole-life carbon