by Dr Vanessa Champion, founder Journal of Biophilic Design
The transition to a circular built environment requires more than better recycling. It means rethinking how we value existing buildings, use materials and design for the future.
What if the most sustainable building material is the one we already have? And what if the greatest opportunity for creating more resilient buildings and cities lies not in what we construct next, but in what we choose to retain?
These questions were at the heart of the Association for Sustainable Building Products’ (ASBP) Building Resilience Through Reuse event, held at the British Library in London on 4th November 2026. Bringing together voices from policy, planning and the built environment, the event explored how we move away from a linear model of construction – extract, manufacture, build, demolish and dispose – towards an economy that values resources for as long as possible.
The case for change is urgent. Construction is the UK’s largest consumer of raw materials and a major contributor to waste and carbon emissions. Green Alliance research suggests that changes to design, finance and data could reduce the sector’s use of raw materials by 35%. Its subsequent analysis found that better design practices could reduce construction material use by 22%, potentially lowering overall project costs by 13%.
This is about economic resilience, supply-chain security and recognising the financial value locked into the buildings and materials around us. We have finite resources, fluctuating material prices and growing pressure on natural systems, so continuing to rely on virgin materials and short building lifecycles makes little sense.
Retention before replacement
Libby Peake, Senior Fellow and Head of Resource Policy at Green Alliance, made the case for a fundamental shift in how the industry approaches material use. Better design must come first: avoiding over-specification, reducing unnecessary demand and making more effective use of existing buildings and infrastructure. Retaining whole buildings should be considered before the reuse of components, with recycling further down the hierarchy.
Yet our current systems often reward the opposite. Demolition and new-build can be easier to finance, procure and deliver than retaining and adapting what is already there. The value of existing materials is rarely fully recognised, while the costs of extraction, waste, carbon and environmental damage are not always reflected in project decisions.
There is also a wider question about what we are building for the future. One experienced recycling professional, with six decades in the industry, observed that modern buildings do not always contain the same quality of materials as those constructed in the past. Faster, cheaper construction can compromise durability and future reuse. If we are serious about circularity, we must consider not only how materials can be recovered, but how we design and build so that they remain valuable for generations.
Peake highlighted the need for better policy, more consistent data and incentives that support circular business models. Regulation can help create the conditions for change, particularly where businesses recognise the need to act but are reluctant to move without a clear framework. Public procurement, planning requirements and improved access to finance can all help establish a market for reused materials.
Making retrofit and reuse happen
Charlotte O’Farrell from the City of London demonstrated how these principles can be translated into planning practice.
The City’s approach recognises that resilience is not only about designing buildings to last. It is about understanding the value of existing structures and making retention and reuse the starting point for development decisions.
Through its emerging retrofit-first approach and early-stage planning discussions, the City is encouraging developers to assess existing buildings before committing to demolition. Whole-life carbon and resource efficiency are brought into the conversation early, allowing different redevelopment options to be compared before decisions become difficult or expensive to change.
The example of 75 London Wall illustrates what this can achieve. Following an assessment of the building’s structural capacity and redevelopment options, retrofit with an extension was identified as the preferred approach. The resulting proposal retained the complete substructure, 77% of the superstructure and part of the façade.
Other examples demonstrate that reuse can extend well beyond interior finishes. At 81 Newgate Street, approximately 76% of the existing structure was retained and around 388 metres of Portland stone from the original façade was carefully removed and reused. At another project, steel recovered from a building in the City was reused at the Duke Street development in Westminster, where it reportedly accounts for around 80% of the new building’s steel frame.
These projects show that reuse is not simply an aspiration or a future technology. With the right planning, collaboration and technical expertise, it is already possible.
Information, value and the missing marketplace
One of the strongest messages from O’Farrell’s presentation was that information must be collected much earlier in the process. Material audits should not simply record how many tonnes of material are leaving a site. They should identify what is there, its condition, how it is fixed, whether it can be tested and where it might go next. Photographs, technical details and clear records of reuse opportunities can inform decisions about deconstruction, design, storage, remanufacturing and procurement.
But information needs somewhere to go. At present, material assessment tools, digital platforms and exchange networks are fragmented. My thoughts are there is an opportunity to create a more connected marketplace – something akin to Rightmove for buildings, but for materials – where reclaimed products and components can be identified, assessed, valued and matched with future projects.
Material passports, digital asset records and material-flow analysis could all contribute, provided they are simple, consistent and accessible. Better archives and building records would allow future owners and contractors to understand what a building contains, rather than having to rediscover its materials every time it is refurbished or redeveloped.
There is also a need to make the economic case more visible. Embodied carbon and circularity remain poorly understood by many clients, tenants and investors. What if carbon and material value were considered at the outset of a project, translated into financial terms that clients could readily understand? A material index could help establish the value of resources already embedded in buildings, while better data could help investors assess risks associated with resource scarcity, stranded assets and the future insurability of buildings.
The economics of waste also deserve scrutiny. If it is cheaper to export materials for processing overseas than to recover and reuse them domestically, we must ask who is bearing the true environmental and human cost. A system that makes waste exports financially attractive while overlooking the conditions under which materials are processed is not a resilient circular economy.
From good practice to business as usual
Both keynote presentations pointed towards the same challenge: much of the technical knowledge and many of the solutions already exist. What is missing is the scale of adoption and the commercial infrastructure to make reuse routine.
Circularity must be embedded in governance and project briefs from the beginning, not left until later design stages when value engineering, procurement decisions and programme pressures can remove the opportunity. Client ambitions around carbon, ESG and biodiversity should be established at the outset and carried through the project’s risk register and decision-making. Sustainability risks should not sit in a separate document, disconnected from the main project risks.
Standards such as BREEAM and WELL have an important role, but circularity needs to be embedded more consistently in how projects are commissioned, assessed and delivered. The question should not just be whether a building meets a sustainability standard, but whether the project has genuinely considered what already exists, what can be retained and what resources it will leave behind.
Biophilic Design
As designers and specifiers, we need to rethink the value of buildings. For me, this is where Biophilic Design has an important role to play. By reconnecting people with nature and designing places that support human and ecological wellbeing, we can help create buildings that people value, want to care for and want to retain.
There are practical ways to achieve this. We can breathe new life into existing buildings through retrofit, improving natural daylight, views of nature, ventilation and access to outdoor spaces rather than demolishing and starting again. We can specify reclaimed timber, stone and other natural materials, giving resources a second life while bringing texture, warmth and a tangible connection to the natural world into our interiors.
And we can design buildings and landscapes together, retaining mature trees, restoring habitats and integrating planting, water and biodiversity so that a development contributes positively to its surroundings.
These are not decorative additions. They are ways of creating places with greater meaning, identity and lasting value – places that support people while respecting the resources and ecosystems on which we depend.
A building's worth should not be measured solely by its location, floor area or immediate market price, but also by the materials and resources it contains, the wellbeing it supports, its contribution to nature and the opportunities it offers future generations.
A building is not a “finished product”. It is a store of resources, a record of previous investment and potentially the foundation for something better in the future. Building resilience starts by recognising what we already have – and designing with nature to ensure that we retain, reuse and value it.
Find out more about the Association of Sustainable Building Products, click here: https://asbp.org.uk
Anyone working in Biophilic Design needs to understand the impact their specification is having on “life”. Afterall, this is what Biophilia is all about….
