On the Aesthetics of Reuse

Our Chair for Circular Engineering for Architecture has recently finished teaching its first course: Design for Circular Construction (D4C^2). In the intensive summer course students deconstructed a pavilion, used digitization and computational techniques to design a new structure from reuse, then built the designed output primarily out of wooden members. The dome was being used as a structure for a wedding in a garden and thus needed to be protected against the elements. To adhere to the spirit of the class, we made a natural paint for its outer layer, largely from ingredients we had from an earlier project: water, flour, linseed oil, black soap, and iron sulfate. The latter gave it a burnt red color, of which many of the students were not pleased with. Their argument largely being it did not communicate that natural and rustic aesthetic of the salvaged and reused members and hoped for something that better expressed the materiality, or at least did not contrast as much with the verdant garden.

What is the aesthetic of reuse, the spirit of circularity? What’s more, how do we express its language through our design and architecture? As of yet, the effort to transition to a circular economy is difficult, in part, because of the lack of comparative metrics. I’ve observed many architects and project managers who positively aim to become “circular” with their projects but do not have a way to obviously measure or communicate it. This builds a risk for becoming ostentatious and lavish in design so that the only thing communicated is that materials were reused, regardless of their efficacy.

An example of overt reuse: The Circular Pavilion from Encore Heureux (image source: Dezeen)

I believe that there is no formal thesis of the architecture of reuse and it's inherently built upon heterogeneity and unpredictability. There can be no unifying form as it follows availability and will be contextual to accessible materials. This permits and encourages a bespoke and irreproducible aesthetic that, subsequently, encourages emergent diversity in expression.

Most movements of design are developed and instituted centrally with dissemination from the epicenter of conception. Yet, the practice of reuse is by nature decentralized and localized. In a circular economy, one of the primary tenants is to reuse the materials at hand instead of their disposal. Thus, one’s available materials for new inventions are by necessity what is locally available in contrast to sourcing raw materials. In parallel to dietary movements pushing towards eating locally and seasonally, at a civilizational level we must also build locally and in the season with which the materials become ripe for harvesting.

“form follows resources”

One popular adage guiding the procedure of design in our built environment is “form follows function”. Naturally, this paradigm is often challenged and within the burgeoning framework for reuse emerges a new paradigm of “form follows resources”. At first thought, this principle may feel like a reversion as the role of the designer in reuse is less focused on designing expression and more refocused on designing solutions. As available resources become the driver, the resources subsumes the role of expression in form through its own native materiality, not primarily through its predetermined creation.

Circularity, or reuse, is not a design language, more so it acts as a design premise, a cultural attitude or scaffolding upon which language is then built. This is the rub, part of the crux of why many from the architect to the building owner struggle with the reuse strategy. How do you communicate its idiosyncrasies or sustainability value if we cannot overtly color it green or don it with a sustainable building label. Yet, the aims of a circular economy in our built environment are humbler than standards, labeling, or design expression. The integration of reuse may not ever become visually homogeneous or possess traits of a common pattern language, but perhaps may yet become ever more ubiquitous as the shape of our economic and material flows now arc towards circularity.?