'Design with Discards’

Lang, Ruth (2021) 'Design with Discards’. Architectural Review. ISSN 0003-861X

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Abstract

The pages of architectural journals and websites are replete with beautiful images of buildings for us to admire in their pristine and tentatively inhabited glory. They paint a perfect picture of architecture as it is sent out into the world for us to celebrate, a media meritocracy which forms the basis by which we judge the quality of a practice’s work. But these projects are merely the lucky few to have successfully negotiated the full gauntlet of the construction process from concept to completion, and beneath this seemingly simple veneer is a vast repository of frustrated efforts. If we were to look beyond the rarefied and perfectly composed image of these lauded projects, to instead explore the working processes which underpin their design practice, we would find a murky myriad of loose and dead ends - of site strategies unpursued, material samples unused, entire schemes discarded. A huge creative value lies in the projects (or parts of projects) you won’t see out there in the real world, a value which has come about from an enormous investment of labour, skill, resources, and emotion. As a profession, however, architects lack the feedback mechanisms by which to contemplate these more interesting and unusual facets of practice which haven’t made it to completion. The bravest and most ingenious design approaches thus often reside in the ash heap of history.

Item Type:	Article
Sustainable Development Goals:	Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
Keywords:	reuse waste procurement construction
Depositing User:	Dr Ruth Lang
Date Deposited:	24 Jun 2026 14:06
Last Modified:	25 Jun 2026 08:25
URI:	https://ube.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/214

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