Managing different priorities within an organisation to keep up to date with future trends and our VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world is difficult for many companies. We regularly experience a tension between short-term profit targets and long-term vision.

How do we deliver true impact? One proven framework to deliver long term sustainable growth, is by looking at things differently, i.e. factoring in stocks and flows of natural, social human and manufactured capitals.

There are significant material, energy, labour and carbon savings to be made by reusing, rather than remaking, a product. How does this work in business? And how does it fit into a circular economy? In this episode, Colin Webster from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation speaks to José Manuel Moller from Algramo about the role of reuse in household shopping, and to architect Nitesh Magdani about reuse in the built environment.

Useful links:

Explore the butterfly diagram

Read the reuse booklet

Learn more about Algramo

Visit Net Positive Solutions

excerpt from ACAN circular series blog, published on April 2022

This event examined applying circular strategies at RIBA Stage 4, Technical Design, during which designers develop their design in sufficient detail for tendering and construction assembly delivery on site. This step includes decisions on construction details, choice of materials and standards of workmanship, and architects will respond to queries set out in the design responsibility matrix.

For this talk, ACAN’s Matthew Morris, spoke to Dr. Elma Durmisēvić, architect and director of 4D architects in Amsterdam, and Nitesh Magdani, founder of Net Positive Solutions, about applying circular principles and thinking at this stage of the design process. Durmisēvić spoke about reversible building design, and Magdani stepped back to think about applying circular thinking in collaboration with construction professionals, clients and across supply chains.

To instil confidence and reduce the uncertainty surrounding Circular Business Models (CBMs) within the built environment sector, this report explores ways CBMs provide added benefits throughout the value chain. By highlighting the value proposition to all stakeholders, it is intended that more companies will see the benefit of contributing to a built environment based on a circular economy…

Discover how European construction leader Royal BAM Group nv is applying circular design principles to bring the circular economy to the built environment.

Original article featured in Redshift by Autodesk, 08th November 2017, by Angus Stocking

In linear economics, objects of desire from skyscrapers to paperclips are waste waiting to happen. Now, linearity is reaching the end of the line: designers are looking to the loop and redefining refuse as resource.

Author: Barbara Kiser, Books & Arts Editor for Nature