A campaign led by journalist Will Hurst at The Architects Journal to champion retrofit and reuse over demolition and rebuild, targeting regulatory, professional, and financial structures
Context
In recent years, reductions in embodied and in-use energy achieved through green building technologies such as insulation have been eclipsed by increases in new, carbon-intensive construction. Emissions from these buildings, and the construction sector as a whole, continue to rise despite the need for rapid decarbonisation.
Practice
“The greenest building is the one that already exists”
Proposing that technologies alone cannot solve building’s carbon addiction, RetroFirst is a UK-based campaign that seeks to leverage government instruments such as tax, policy, and procurement, in order to transform building norms and incentivise retrofit. The campaign advocates not only material and technological processes, but a cultural shift in construction norms that moves away from extractivist modes of production and consumption to prioritise climate and social needs.
Noting that existing economic models incentivise wasteful processes, such as demolition and new-build, RetroFirst’s campaign makes three demands to the British government. First, to cut value-added tax (VAT) on refurbishment, repair, and maintenance from the current standard rate of 20%, to 5% or less (the rate for new build is 0%). Second, to use policy (planning guidance and building regulations) to promote the reuse of buildings and materials over new construction. Third, to insist that all public procurement consider retrofit, circular economy, and whole-life carbon accounting the first option by default. Whilst part of RetroFirst’s campaign makes new builds unfashionable amongst architects, and promotes retrofit as a design practice, it goes beyond simply raising awareness by proposing real economic procedures.
Led by the architectural journalist Will Hurst, and launched in September 2019, the campaign uses the British publication the Architectural Journal (the AJ) as a prominent platform for its campaign. Creating the knowledge base for action, the AJ frequently publishes exemplary case studies as “RetroFirst Stories”, hosts annual retrofit awards, reports on and campaigns against high-profile demolition proposals, and publishes research into planned tax, policy, and legal changes. In June 2020, RetroFirst sent a letter to the British government, signed by over 250 supporters including the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), calling for reforms in areas of tax, policy and procurement. While government volatility potentially undermines this important call, the letter’s wide distribution and publication in the AJ bolsters a growing and shared knowledge base for decarbonisation and spatial justice.
Spatial justice is an important dimension of Retrofirst’s campaign. Understanding climate and social needs as intensely related, the campaign highlights how demolition and rebuild schemes displace communities, financialise assets, and gentrify areas, chiming with the work of Civic Square and other community-focused climate groups. Targeting the systems that perpetuate extractivism, RetroFirst proposes a new approach to design and construction, and shows why this is essential both for social justice, and climate decarbonisation.