In with the old – making better use of our existing buildings
Like many people grappling with climate anxiety, I try to align personal values with daily actions. I mostly buy second-hand, repair, recycle, use my e-bike to go pretty much everywhere, and advocate for regenerative urban development.
And inevitably, I feel like an absolute hypocrite when I fly to Europe every five years or so to maintain family connections beyond questionable digital interactions.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, right? Yet professionally, it’s complicated. As an architect, I’m tasked with designing predominantly new buildings.
In fact, the wellbeing of Aotearoa’s construction industry, responsible for 20% of our carbon emissions, depends on the perpetual demand for new buildings.
And while progress has been made in materials and energy emissions, it is important to recognise that the building sector remains very far from meeting our Zero Carbon Act goals for net-zero emissions by 2050.
In 2023, Whakatū Nelson has been contemplating its future with debates over Plan Change 29, expert opinions on the death of the city centre, and events like “What if Nelson”.
Talks of new infrastructure, new library, new science hub, new apartments or, hopefully not, new carparks sparked in me some excitement but also raised concerns about the potential adverse environmental impact all this “newness” might have if conventionally built.
All in the name of regeneration, ironically.
While I’m an advocate for change, innovation, and genuine regeneration, I also like to believe that meaningful shifts can arise from casting a new perspective on the existing.
“The greenest building is the one that already exists,” declared former American Institute of Architects President Carl Elefante. Adaptation over demolition is key.
Adaptive reuse (the reuse of existing buildings for new purposes) is an inherently sustainable alternative to meeting social, cultural, or housing needs. It reduces the need for new resources, consumes less energy, emits less carbon, and produces less waste compared to demolishing and rebuilding (50% of New Zealand landfill is construction and demolition waste).
Every time a building is demolished, the carbon stored in its materials escapes into the atmosphere, releasing pollutants into the air, soil, and water.
I think about this each time I see vacant buildings, often of heritage significance, tragically awaiting demolition due to the perceived costs of an upgrade. What “costs” are we considering?
Adopting a long-term, valuesbased approach to costs that includes environmental, social, cultural, and health considerations could reshape this view. Seismic strengthening, often perceived as a barrier, is a skill we have acquired through hard learned experience and is often not as costly as commonly thought.
The costs associated with demolishing and constructing new typically far exceed those of a well-executed retrofit. It’s not necessarily carbon-intensive either. Internal strengthening can now be done using timber, while energy and interior upgrades can be achieved using biomaterials like wood, straw, hemp or earth.
Although the development aspect of construction often prioritises short-term profits, there's hope in landlords and developers making ethical choices and adopting this approach.
However, a more reliable path forward could be through incentives provided by government and councils.
According to BRANZ, it won’t take long before carbon footprint calculations become a required part of a building consent application.
And it’s good news! It will enhance understanding of construction impacts beyond upfront materials and costs, including operational costs and environmental ramifications.
This presents an opportunity for councils to incentivise lower carbon emissions by reducing fees for new buildings and retrofits that demonstrate a low carbon footprint.
Consents could be denied for projects exceeding an emissions threshold.
Adaptive reuse would then emerge as an obvious choice, while demolition, as quoted by Pritzker Prize laureate Anne Lacaton, would be seen for what it is: “an act of violence.”
Carbon emissions aside, reusing older buildings is a conscious choice to safeguard a fragment of history, house collective memory and allow present and past to coexist within the same space, inevitably enriching it.
It opens opportunities to incorporate the stories of tangata whenua into historical colonial buildings, to not only reflect our (often problematic) past but also to indicate where we want to go in terms of bi-cultural representation in our built environment.
There’s a special quality to being in a building that bridges the present and the past.
It’s a little bit like having a deep conversation with an older friend – they’re here with us in the present, yet they carry experiences from a time we’ll never have the chance to witness.
Some of my most memorable architectural experiences involve reused buildings: from my architecture school in France, once a car manufacturing facility, to my local library in Madrid housed in an old church, and my favourite art hub, the Matadero – a former slaughterhouse transformed into a thriving contemporary arts space.
A party many years ago held in a 360-year-old building in Brussels, which served as a chapel, arsenal, jail, school, ballroom, and now a performance arts space.
For nearly a decade, I taught at Unitec School of Architecture in Auckland, formerly an asylum known to be haunted by highly creative souls (now facing demolition threats). I’ve also been fortunate to work on several adaptive reuse projects in Europe and Aotearoa, and as much as I enjoy the straightforwardness of new construction, bringing old buildings back to life is uniquely rewarding.
An adaptive reuse is envisaged for the proposed arts hub in Nelson. Whakatū certainly does not lack old buildings awaiting a new breath, including the former Refinery Arts Space on Halifax, the heritage-classified Masonic temple on Collingwood St, and the former Nelson Institute Building, once home to the public library, the Nelson Provincial Museum, and NMIT’s School of Fisheries until seismic issues forced its closure.
I have a soft spot for the brutal council building which I like to imagine transformed into apartments with lush balconies oozing with vegetation.
And finally, my big crush: the Anchor Shipping & Foundry Building, designed by Arthur R. Griffin in 1927 on Wakefield Quay.
Following the closure of the company, the building served various purposes, including as a printers and distillery, before being purchased by the Nelson City Council in 2013 and determined to be earthquake-prone in 2017.
At a time when everyone talks about “regenerating” our city, perhaps it’s also time to reevaluate what needs regeneration and start looking at what we have rather than hoping that “newness” will solve everything.