In a regional recycling plant in Australia, Stewart Monti of Atelier Ten will use waste materials to … build the waste processing building.
At Port Kembla, south of Sydney, near Wollongong, Monti and his team are working on a 200-hectare parcel of surplus land owned by BlueScope Steel to create a new industrial ecosystem. It will use large-scale systems thinking to connect advanced manufacturing, education, technology-based industries and businesses linked to renewable energy.
In London, tough embodied carbon rules mean that on one project, the British team will remove the steel members of a building that is up for retrofit, test them for strength and reliability, and then reuse them, whole.
The benefit could well be more floor space for the developer, because the carbon budget can be spent, if not on waste of existing building materials, then on new construction.
Monti said he will also touch on the “sticking points of circularity: logistics, insurance, certification, and the design decisions that help navigate them. The emphasis is on what’s already working—not future hypotheticals.
“This is about making circularity a design driver, not an afterthought. And showing how it leads to lower carbon, lower cost, better performing outcomes.”