Spec Finish

Sustainability In June 2019, the UK became the first major economy in the world to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by 2050. The construction sector will need to reform to support this goal and the CLC Roadmap to Recovery has laid out proposals to secure the future of construction businesses nationwide, while setting the industry on a sustainable path towards recovery. But what does all this actually mean to projects in the finishes and interiors sector? A PATH TO NET ZERO 16 www.thefis.org A t the FIS conference last September, Adam Strudwick, Principal, Corporate Interiors at global design practice, Perkins+Will, discussed the sustainability approaches his company takes when it comes to the finishes and interiors sector, bearing in mind that around 40% of the global carbon footprint is attributed to the built environment. The data is complex, but the fit-out of a building is responsible for around 40% of the energy within that building, and we know that every day, on average, about 300 tonnes of fit-out goes into landfill. We also need to deal what happens at the end of the life of projects, so late in 2020, Perkins+Will set a roadmap of how, by 2030, they will get to a position where they can design all interiors projects to be net zero embodied carbon. This can’t be solved by one individual, vertical section of our industry. Designers have a big part to play and so do clients. Investors, potentially, have the biggest part to play at the beginning of the cycle when it comes to new projects and new developments. Adam said: “We put a lot of time and effort into work within the supply chain to understand how we can improve the process of designing more sustainable interiors, and it is really important that all of these different parts of our industry work together to make the big improvements that need to happen.” Circular design principles and circular design procurement According to Adam, circular design as a philosophy is something that will contribute to driving down embodied carbon. He said: “We know that the most important thing to clients at the moment is adaptability of their buildings and spaces. We can’t afford to deliver static environments anymore, because businesses just don’t operate in that way. Everything changes all the time, we saw that during the pandemic, but that’s just one example of the kind of continuous challenges that we as businesses face and circular design is, in principle, also adaptable. Perkins+Will considers ‘design for disassembly’ as a design ethos and they embed reversible design into everything they do so that they design products and interiors that don’t have a single cycle. “Every building should be a material bank for the next project so we don’t have a linear use of materials. Every time we finish a project, we should think about that as a store of materials so that every project is a kind of ‘B&Q’ for the next project. We spent years mining the natural world, but now we need to start ‘urban mining’, where we go back into the places we’ve already created, and re-use resources from there before we go back into the natural world and use those resources.” Recycle or re-use? Recycling has always been seen to be a good thing, but should we make recycling the last resort and make re-use our first approach now? This may require a re-design of the global construction industry and a rethink how we manage resources, how we design projects, and how we use assets through a longer life cycle to develop an industry that manages resources in a way that is intrinsically circular. There’s also a big push to consider extended producer responsibility, meaning that the maker of something is responsible for the carbon impact of that product, rather than the person that buys it. Adam explained that when we move to an extended product responsibility model, manufacturers really have to think about what happens to their products; they can’t simply wash their hands of them once they are sold. He said: “We’re never going to be at net zero if we keep making new things and as we move into the next 10 years, everyone involved in the industry is going to make this the number one priority to make the changes that need to happen. That gives great us confidence that we’re going to meet the targets that we need to meet.” www.perkinswill.com Five reasons to use sustainable building materials We know that big changes are needed up and down the supply chain if we are to achieve our net zero targets, and part of those considerations should be to use more stainable building materials in every project. FIS member, Specwall, is helping forge the way for modern methods of construction in the finishes and interiors sector, leading to an efficient, less costly future and offers some useful suggestions here: 1. Minimise waste Much construction waste is avoidable, and there are opportunities to do better at almost every stage of the building process. Consider switching to sustainable building materials which can be fully recycled and reused. A standard Specwall Adam Strudwick, Principal, Corporate Interiors at Perkins+Will