Building Circularity: Why our renaissance needs to be a perfect circle

Our world is running out of resources. We need to conserve and reuse those we have, especially in the built environment. We need to design better, build better and fast-track better technology and research into alternative materials.

So what are the best architects and engineers globally, including in Australia and New Zealand, doing to radically reduce embodied carbon and waste in our buildings? How will this fast track the circular economy?

This is a firecracker virtual symposium with fantastic leaders from the built environment. If you have anything to do with building new or conserving our existing building stock, you need to be at The Fifth Estate’s – Building Circularity: Why our Renaissance needs to be a perfect circle.

Program

9 am: Registration and networking

10 am: Welcome from The Fifth Estate & MC Maria Atkinson

A global perspective – When 2020 changed the world (and we all woke up) 

Let’s stretch this target – the global ambition with FAANGS and more

• Chris Trott, Partner, Foster + Partners, live from London on the global perspective
• Muir Livingstone, Partner, Foster + Partners, Sydney studio, on Australian projects
• Paul Stoller, Director, Atelier TEN – What big FAANGS (Facebook Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) & co want and how this is driving change through their suppliers (including banks)
• Sjoerd Post, CEO, Jasmax on the New Zealand view and how clients are driving demand and the bi-cultural Indigenous influence

11.10 am: Circular development – What’s possible from developers, the circular economy for materials, precincts? What can government policy do to help?

More to come…

11.50 am: How do we build this thing? When design meets construction’s cool light of day and discovers an alternative dimension (strange, different)

• Ninotschka Titchkosky, Co-CEO, BVN – presentation on research into robotics, materials, 3 d printing, the possible future of building. 

12.10 am: Panel discussion

• Ninotschka Titchkosky, Co-CEO, BVN
• David Chandler, NSW Building Commissioner

More to come…

1 pm-1.30 pm: Lunch break and networking

1.30 pm: The Spanish-ish Materials Inquisition

Moderator/chief judge Jon Dee

We ask “witnesses” to take the “stand” and give “testimony” on key sustainability profiles/metrics of key building materials – including those still fresh out of the lab. Are they truly sustainable? Do they have downstream contaminants? Are they recyclable? Are they available in quantity and commercially viable? Or just a cute gimmick? What are we planning for their life cycle?

Expert judges

• Caroline Noller, CEO, The Footprint Company
• Jonas Bengston, CEO, Edge Environment 
• Monica Richter, Senior Manager, Low Carbon Futures WWF

Witnesses

• Spotlight: Lisa McLean, CEO, NSW Circular
• Veena Sahajwalla, UNSW Laureate Professor, Director of Centre for Sustainable Materials Research & Technology, University of New South Wales
• Jason Zafiriadis, General Manager, Wagner’s Earth Friendly Concrete
• Philip Oldfield, Associate Professor and Director of the Architecture Program, UNSW Sydney

More to come…

Voting by judges and audience to decide the verdict from each inquisition 

2.30 pm: Our circular ambition – when design met the future we want and completes the circle

Let’s take aboard our fantastic design and technology possibilities, our re-imagining of our buildings, new and old and go back to first principles. What do we really need, what do we really want? How do we want to live? Do we actually need all these buildings?

• Caroline Pidcock – Spokesperson, Architects Declare 
• Amanda Sturgeon, Head of Regenerative Design, Mott MacDonald

3.30 pm: close