Welcome

Welcome to the Programme Summary of the School of Re-Construction 2021 which contains for public reference, recordings and presentations and an outline of the key people involved.   The digital School of Re-construction (SoR-c) considered concepts and propositional ideas that considered ways to re-use materials and elements from the built environment.

The event took place in August 2021 and was the digital summer school component of the FCRBE project which stands for Facilitating the circulation of reclaimed building elements and has been co-funded by the EU’s North Western Europe Interreg Fund. This is a 4-year research project focussing on the discipline of building de-construction (as opposed to demolition) and crucially the re-use of de-constructed building components into building projects. So why is this issue so important in contemporary design & architecture? Well the built environment is responsible for consuming 50% of all raw materials mined and harvested annually, as well as creating over 45% of all CO2 emissions worldwide, and in the UK generating over 60% of all waste going to landfill and incineration – that’s 120 million tonnes of useful resources thrown away! Therefore, if we can find ways to dramatically reduce the amount of stuff the built environment consumes then we (humans) can go some way towards reducing our negative impact of our beautiful host planet.

With this challenge in mind, the School of Re-Construction assembled some of the world’s leading academics and practitioners considering authentic low carbon closed-loop sustainable design & architecture. We invited applications from students of design, architecture, construction or engineering based at universities in North-West Europe.  As result,   72 students from across the world joined our experts to work in 11 teams for two weeks in August (02nd-13th) 2021 considering a range of themes building on the ideas explored by the FCRBE project. In addition, we organised a packed programme of digital events that were open to the public running for the duration of the summer school.

Please take a look at the Programme for recordings and presentations from these sessions which are now available to the public.