waste redefined
This weekend past, I travelled to Brighton in the company of Huff & Puff Construction to attend Green Architecture Day 2016. Hosted by Brighton University, collectively organised by Brighton Permaculture Trust and the Low Carbon Trust, it was the fifteenth in the series of annual talks on the theme of sustainable construction. The speakers this year addressed the subjects of architecture, construction, philosophy, planning and sustainability; besides this, there was the opportunity to have a guided tour of Brighton Waste House by Cat Fletcher.
First to present was a fixture of these proceedings: Duncan Baker-Brown, senior lecturer at Brighton University and principal of BBM Sustainable Design. His presentation was, for me, perhaps the most exciting, discussing the idea of the circular economy as an introduction to his new book: The Re-Use Atlas. Based upon the notion making 'waste' a redundant concept, items that have completed their functional lifespan are instead broken into their constituent biological and technical nutrients and reinterpreted into new products. Without material degradation, and assuming a clean energy source, this cycle can continue anon with no carbon or ecological footprint: it continually re-cycles materials without loss of performance. The concept isn't anything new - it's abundantly apparent in all natural cycles - but as an economic concept it only really received due consideration in McDonough and Braungart's Cradle to Cradle (2002).
Without my making the association until composing this blog, Ben Law spoke about the circular economy inherent in his work as a forester and builder. Photographs of his own, infamously self-built, home and the stand of sweet chesnut he coppiced to build it were accompanied and followed by an exposition of the advantages of timber in the round and his development of just two joint types to simplify its carpentry. Moving on to describe forest management and coppicing, he appealed for a reclamation of Britain's untended coppices to revitalise an industry that provides timber in one of the most sustainable ways imaginable and increases biodiversity through providing more sunlight through the canopy to the forest floor.
Alice Edgerley of Turner Prize winning Assemble gave an inspiring talk on social agency, stretching sustainable architecture far beyond specifying low impact materials or incorporating passive solar techniques to instead act as a channel to empower and enable people. By conducting analyses in collaboration with relevant actors, the collective grows to understand their issues and needs - more than that, they facilitate the actors themselves understanding the aforementioned and then assist them in arriving at appropriate solutions. They practise everything contemporary architecture should aspire to achieve: high quality design that is socially conscious and conscientious.
Brighton Waste House is, as the name suggests, a building constructed of waste. Rolls of wallpaper, obsolete VHS and audio cassettes, toothbrushes and more that was consigned to landfill comprise the envelope of the EPC A rated test project. Whilst conceived in a more traditional manner to the interventions of Assemble, the building process has been entirely inclusive and involved hundreds of students and volunteers: the structure now remains as a demonstration of potential material re-use and a laboratory for testing the performance of the many forms of debris utilised in the structure.
The day concluded with a plenary before we South Westerners had to wend our way to Stoneywish Nature Reserve to camp the night. The lingering thought, so eloquently articulated by the woodsman, came in his final statement and summarised the inherent beauty and sustainability of the model of the circular economy, "And all the time the trees are growing."
Without my making the association until composing this blog, Ben Law spoke about the circular economy inherent in his work as a forester and builder. Photographs of his own, infamously self-built, home and the stand of sweet chesnut he coppiced to build it were accompanied and followed by an exposition of the advantages of timber in the round and his development of just two joint types to simplify its carpentry. Moving on to describe forest management and coppicing, he appealed for a reclamation of Britain's untended coppices to revitalise an industry that provides timber in one of the most sustainable ways imaginable and increases biodiversity through providing more sunlight through the canopy to the forest floor.
Alice Edgerley of Turner Prize winning Assemble gave an inspiring talk on social agency, stretching sustainable architecture far beyond specifying low impact materials or incorporating passive solar techniques to instead act as a channel to empower and enable people. By conducting analyses in collaboration with relevant actors, the collective grows to understand their issues and needs - more than that, they facilitate the actors themselves understanding the aforementioned and then assist them in arriving at appropriate solutions. They practise everything contemporary architecture should aspire to achieve: high quality design that is socially conscious and conscientious.
Brighton Waste House is, as the name suggests, a building constructed of waste. Rolls of wallpaper, obsolete VHS and audio cassettes, toothbrushes and more that was consigned to landfill comprise the envelope of the EPC A rated test project. Whilst conceived in a more traditional manner to the interventions of Assemble, the building process has been entirely inclusive and involved hundreds of students and volunteers: the structure now remains as a demonstration of potential material re-use and a laboratory for testing the performance of the many forms of debris utilised in the structure.
The day concluded with a plenary before we South Westerners had to wend our way to Stoneywish Nature Reserve to camp the night. The lingering thought, so eloquently articulated by the woodsman, came in his final statement and summarised the inherent beauty and sustainability of the model of the circular economy, "And all the time the trees are growing."