The question we should be asking when we reuse buildings is not ‘what should we get rid of?’ but ‘what can we keep?’

For this year’s FOOTPRINT+, we have been filming deconstruction specialists Lawmens in the strip-out of a typical 8,000 sq m Victorian façade-retained 90s office building near Oxford Street. On our first visit, Johnny Law walked us round what seemed to be a completely usable office interior and said: “The whole lot’s coming out.”

It seemed rather strange to me. I can appreciate that walls would need to be moved or removed for the new tenants’ layout and that finishes could do with updating, but the whole lot? “Yeah, even the lift cars,” was his response.

I asked him how many of these Lawmens did every year and the answer was around 500. Like others, Lawmens is taking an active role in trying to reduce the thousands of tonnes of waste this used to produce, by dismantling rather than demolishing, and they work with sister company Materials Reuse Group to find a new home for as much of it as they can.

A couple of weeks after we filmed, I went back in with photographer Paul Burroughs and we shot what remained for an exhibition that will be located in the FOOTPRINT+ central space called The Art of Reuse. There was literally nothing left except the ductwork from the roof, which was the last thing they were about to take out… and the lift cars.

But taking a step back, why are Lawmens and hundreds of other companies being commissioned to strip out perfectly refreshable commercial interiors? Before the 1950s, nothing was ever stripped back. Interiors were updated, given a new coat of paint and that was that.

Not any longer. These days, agents are in the habit of automatically offering an empty shell and new commercial tenants frequently don’t question why it needs to be stripped out. They then employ a project manager who doesn’t want to upset the boat, and so it goes on, with the architects working up new designs based on a survey of the stripped-back building and the MEP engineers designing new air handling installations, etc, to service the new layout.

Imagine if it was approached differently; if the tenant invited their designers (both spatial and MEP) to view the building before anything started. They could investigate what was there already, what could be kept and what might be adapted to produce the workplace they need. The MEP engineer might then discover there is a deep enough floor void to use the existing risers and move to a new form of floor-based future-proofed HVAC. Meanwhile, the architect would produce layouts that would probably involve fewer rooms.

If the employees were invited to participate in the process, which is something HR might encourage, they might start to discuss between themselves how they could keep as much of the existing fit-out as possible. The team could then allocate some of the budget saved to spend on the things that would make their office a better place to work in, and the employees would take some ownership of it because they had made a positive contribution.

Timescales would be reduced, as would costs. Adapting this environmentally aware approach would also reflect well on the company, and the amount of construction waste going to landfill or being sent for processing abroad would fall to a fraction of that generated by a strip-back to structure approach. So, maybe the first question to be asked should be: what can we keep?