My Green Pod supplement

Location: My Green Pod, Quarterly magazine

Date: Released online and in print on the 27th October 2017

Featured project: The Waste House at Grand Parade, The University of Brighton

“Remember there is no ‘away’ when you throw something away; most of the plastic manufactured over the last 100 years is still with us”

It seems many of us have accepted a system where materials are used and then discarded regardless of the consequences this has on the planet. This Friday The Brighton Waste House and Duncan’s book The Re-use Atlas: A Designer’s guide to the circular economy will be featured in The Guardian’s quarterly magazine “MyGreenPod”. The article entitled “A revolution in design” will be released online and in print on Friday morning.

The Brighton Waste House as it became known was opened in June 2014 and continues to be a ‘live’ on-going research project and permanent new design workshop (it is not a dwelling) focused on enabling open discussion and understanding of sustainable development. It is situated on campus at The University of Brighton’s College for Arts & Humanities at Grand Parade. Designed by Senior Lecturer & Architect Duncan Baker-Brown, together with undergraduate architecture & interior architecture students, this project was built by apprentices from The Mears Group, students from City College Brighton & Hove and The Faculty of Arts as well as volunteers. In all over 350 students helped with the project.

The Brighton Waste House is the first permanent ‘carbon negative’ public building in Europe to be constructed from approximately 90% waste, surplus material & discarded plastic gathered from the construction and other industries, as well as our homes. It has Full Planning & Building Regulations Approvals. It tries to prove “that there is no such thing as waste, just stuff in the wrong place!”

The Re-Use Atlas is a highly illustrated ‘atlas’, taking the reader on a journey, via four distinct ‘steps’ (recycling, reuse, reduce, closed loop), from our current ‘linear economy’ towards a system emulating the natural world, i.e, a ‘circular economy’. Featuring over 25 detailed case studies describing design exemplars from the worlds of textile & fashion design, product design, interior architecture, architecture and urban design, its purpose is to show designers how they can successfully navigate and exploit the emerging field of resource management and the circular economy. Each step is supplemented with an in depth interview with an expert who is successfully tackling one or more of these challenges that present all designers today. For more information on the Re-Use Atlas visit our blog which provides an insight into several of the case studies featured in the book.