As part of our Carbon Matters series, we want to share some of our thinking around material reuse. We are a reuse practice. This typically means that we work with existing buildings, often listed or historically significant buildings, and redevelop them to safeguard the heritage whilst allowing for new use. However, sometimes the new use is so dramatically different to the original use that significant change to the building is required.

A recent example of this is our ongoing work to convert a category B listed Church in Glasgow into housing. In this case, the interior of the church will change beyond recognition in order to insert three storeys of new flats into the existing building shell. The architecture of churches is so specific; laden with symbolism, ritual, and memory that a significant amount of good quality material will need to be removed to create energy efficient, comfortable homes for the community. This prompted us to think, what happens to all the material removed from the building? What happens to the pews, the decorative timber balcony balustrading and fragile stained glass windows that cannot be retained? These elements are not needed for the housing, and indeed are not appropriate in the housing, but hold the memories of the church community and contain good quality material that has potential for reuse.

To help us think about this issue, we held a workshop with the whole office. The starting point was careful observation of the existing. As architects, we observe and think through drawings. However, it can be hard to take the time to really draw the existing condition carefully, particularly when we get detailed Revit surveys or Matterport models. But there is more to drawing and surveying than just documenting the physical size of things. It is about observing the “qualities” of something – tangible and intangible.

Part one involved visiting the church together and spending time drawing, observing and documenting the quality of the material identified for removal. Part two was back in the office where we challenged ourselves to consider how the elements observed could be reimagined and re-used as part of the housing scheme. We challenged ourselves to draw in different ways, using this drawing exercise to test different methods and media and free our thinking.

The results were exciting, lots of brilliant ideas where the memories were respected, but the life of the material could still be extended by re-use. This approach would reduce the embodied carbon of the project and retain good material on site. However, these are just ideas. The specification and procurement processes in the construction industry make it difficult for us to re-use material without significant additional cost, particularly in projects like housing where budgets are low, and timescales are tight. “Bespoke” specifications including careful deconstruction, re-working of existing materials and re-assembling reclaimed and new materials into a new construction end up relegated to “special” projects where the client and their budget can accommodate it. We want to throw this conversation open to our colleagues in the construction industry; how can we develop a standard procurement process which allows us to specify, quantify and cost for material re-use to make it mainstream, reliable, warrantable and easy?