Professor Doug King sheds light on the re-use versus re-new debate for existing buildings in an article published on Ingenia Online.

The article looks at three recent building refurbishments in London, keeping the old concrete frames and giving the buildings a new lease of low energy life by re-cladding them. The Angel Building is one of the buildings studied and the advantage of re-use were not just future operational energy reduction; versus a demolition and new build, cost and time were saved as well as embodied carbon (apparently equivalent to 13 years of operational carbon emissions).

With such a strain on our natural resources (materials as well as energy) perhaps our UK Building Regulations Part L (Conservation of Fuel and Power) should be joined by a new regulation…Part Q (Conservation of Materials)?