During London’s 3rd annual circular economy week (#CEWeekLDN) event, CIRCuIT partners in London held their very first awareness raising and knowledge sharing event for professionals across the built environment. The event’s main aim was to highlight the need for London and other cities to begin bridging the gap between circular construction theory, practice and policy.
The event was successful in attracting and engaging some of the built environment’s key professions such as; planners and designers who have an important role to play in transforming construction in London. With nearly 50% of respondents to the post event survey stating that they found the event extremely informative and 61% saying they would further explore the ideas they heard.
These ideas were disseminated through a number interactive presentations throughout the day. Starting with a Twitter live Q&A discussion hosted by UKGBC’s Alastair Mant on the opportunities circular construction offers, and what activities are planned to help stimulate it across London. Following this, presentations and workshops were held on the themes of material reuse, building transformation and city-level policies, led by CIRCuIT’s partners BRE, UKGBC and LWARB. And finally, participants heard a keynote address from Sunand Prasad, co-founder of architectural practice Penoyre & Prasad.
In addition to the conference, the Circular City Hack – the first in a series of hackathons exploring solutions to circular construction challenges – was hosted by Clear Village’s Gareth Owen-Lloyd and Nat Hunter. During this ideation session, a team of circular economy experts, designers and makers met in a virtual makerspace to experiment in a guided idea-generating session culminating in pitches for projects which could be made real.
To catch up on presentations, Twitter live sessions, and hear the conclusions from the Circularity Hack, click here.