Architecture and Circularity: Rethinking Design for a Regenerative Built Environment - Tim Schork

Описание: A Just Energy Transition: Law, Economics, and Public Policy
A QUT Symposium — QUT Energy Transition Centre
Venue: GP-C-405, QUT Gardens Point Campus
Friday, 21 November 2025

6. Architecture and Circularity: Rethinking Design for a Regenerative Built Environment
Professor Tim Schork, School of Architecture and Built Environment, Faculty of Engineering, QUT

Abstract
The Australian Government's Circular Economy Framework (2024) sets a national target to double circularity by 2035, identifying the built environment as a priority sector due to its disproportionate material consumption, waste generation, and enduring environmental impact. Within this context, architectural design for circularity is recognised as a key enabler, exerting greater influence over a building's lifecycle performance than any other activity within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector.

Despite this potential, the sector faces persistent challenges: stagnating productivity, resource-intensive practices, and limited integration of circular principles into mainstream workflows. Globally, the built environment contributes 40% of CO₂ emissions, 33% of waste, and nearly half of all extracted materials. With urbanisation accelerating, an estimated 2.6 billion people will require housing by 2050, doubling global building floor area by 2060. If current consumption patterns persist, sustaining a population of 9.6 billion would require the resources of nearly three Earths.

In response, architecture must undergo a profound cultural and intellectual transformation. This involves rethinking how buildings are conceptualised, designed, and constructed - not merely as a technical challenge, but as a systemic shift toward regenerative practices. This presentation explores architecture's capacity to lead this transformation, highlighting the need for multidisciplinary collaboration, reconfigured design workflows, and the development of digital tools that support circular decision-making from the earliest stages of design. It argues that architects must be equipped not only with technical expertise but with the cultural and intellectual frameworks necessary to drive systemic change across the built environment.

Biography

Tim Schork is the Capacity Building Professor of Architecture in the QUT School of Architecture and Built Environment in the Faculty of Engineering. He is an internationally recognised pioneer in architectural computing and advanced manufacturing and a strong advocate for reducing the ecological and environmental footprint of the building industry. He co-authored the Australian Reductions Roadmap, a seminal report that has become a cornerstone reference within the profession. His patented and award-winning research advances computational design, modern methods of construction, and bio-based building materials and develops real-world solutions that transform architectural design and construction practices to be resource-efficient, circular, and affordable.