Stop treating sustainability like a constraint

Our sector has a problem. Every 10 days, building construction and demolition in the UK produce enough waste to fill Wembley Stadium. Across their lifecycle, we treat buildings as consumables, at least partly driven by a view of sustainability as a constraint on an already constrained system, rather than a value unlock.

That’s understandable. For decades, our risk models rewarded homogenisation over exceptionalism, compliance over innovation. It’s led to inertia and a building stock that looks efficient on paper, but performs poorly in practice: environmentally, socially and commercially.

Economically, we’ve stagnated. Until very recently, real rents (i.e., once adjusted for inflation) haven’t changed since Thatcher. And construction is the only major industry over the past half-century that’s seen a fall in productivity.

The good news is that the logic is shifting. What once sat in the “ESG cost” column is becoming the only route to long-term value.

The intrepid have been testing that shift through action. We picked up the challenge at TBC.London, recently completed, but whose seeds were sown back at our acquisition in 2018. Marketed at the time as a knock-down and 12-storey rebuild, we chose a different path: could we build a net zero office primarily from what already existed? Could circularity and re-use hold its own against new build efficiency, tenant appeal and investor economics?

Along the way, we figured out how to certify and re-use 1930s steel. Forty tonnes, urban-mined from the House of Fraser on Oxford Street, were integrated into the frame. Ninety-nine per cent of site waste avoided landfill. The building operates at net zero carbon – 31 kWh/m² base-build GIA, tantalisingly close to “Paris Proof 2050” at 30.

The focus on embodied carbon is key, since the carbon we spend before occupation is often greater than the carbon we save through decades of operation. Embodied carbon accounts for as much as 70% of a commercial building’s lifetime emissions. That single fact reframes the economics of development, even as we wait for Westminster’s £880 per tonne carbon-pricing framework to be adopted elsewhere.

Across Europe, circular-economy measures could unlock £800bn of economic value by 2030. The opportunity is enormous; the barrier, behavioural.

Reuse is not a design preference; it’s an economic imperative.

Getting there at TBC meant looking differently at the detail. Every element was examined for its carbon credentials. The process didn’t slow us down, but it did make the project smarter and more valuable: we discovered the importance of connection with place and provenance and have been able to tell stories about innovation.  Those reused steel beams still carry the dents, scars, imperfections of their previous life. Foundry stamps that became authenticity – detail not defect – and ultimately drove letting velocity and rents.

That discipline extended throughout the supply chain. We specified materials by speaking to suppliers all the way back to source and, along the way, met innovators redefining what construction materials can be: tiles grown by bacteria instead of fired in kilns; paint that cleans the air; an airtightness system that cuts energy loss by half. These aren’t boxes to tick – they’re prototypes of how our industry evolves when curiosity replaces compliance.

We view sustainability as a creative brief not a constraint. And then there’s coherence. The architecture of TBC.London – hand-laid brick referencing its conservation-area context, timber interiors that quieten sound and soften light – isn’t about aesthetic nostalgia. It’s about re-establishing connection between material and maker, between building and place, between value and values.

Projects like this can become provocations. They show that when we design with intent, we unlock financial, social and environmental returns simultaneously. The next frontier is scale – embedding this logic across portfolios, funds and cities.

Only then can sustainability move from cost line to competitive advantage. The question for our industry is no longer whether we can afford to do it, but whether we can afford not to.