Let's throw out the throw-away society

Duncan Baker-Brown’s new book The Re-use Atlas has been hailed as a force to “help change mindsets from demolish and dump, to refurbish, remanufacture and perhaps more importantly to design in the first place with re-use in mind”.

Baker-Brown, University of Brighton Senior Lecturer in architecture, designed the Brighton Waste House in the grounds of the university’s Grand Parade campus in Brighton, a house made from thrown away ‘rubbish’ including 20,000 toothbrushes, 2 tonnes of denim jeans, 4,000 DVD cases, 2,000 floppy discs, 2,000 used carpet tiles to clad the facades plus construction waste.

The house, a live ongoing research project, was constructed by apprentices from the Mears Group, university arts and humanities students and students from City College Brighton & Hove (now Brighton Metropolitan College).

The Re-use Atlas, published by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Publishing, identifies four steps – recycling, reuse, reduce, closed loop – needed to move from a linear economy to a system emulating the natural world, the circular economy.

Architect Duncan Baker-Brown

Brighton Waste House

It features case studies describing design exemplars from the worlds of textile and fashion design, product design, interior architecture, architecture and urban design, this book's purpose is to show designers how they can successfully navigate and exploit the emerging field of resource management and the circular economy.

It includes essays from Professor Walter Stahel of the Product-Life Institute, and Professor Jonathan Chapman, the University of Brighton’s Professor of Sustainable Design and author of Emotionally Durable Design.

Caroline Lucas, Brighton Pavilion’s Green MP, in her review, said: “Politicians respond to ideas that have real, demonstrable examples backing them up. The Re-Use Atlas is full of those. I hope people get inspired, take note and take action.”