Future Builders Conference puts circular thinking into practice

Master Builders Victoria’s newly renamed Future Builders Conference brought circular construction, adaptive reuse and emerging building systems into sharper focus in Melbourne, with the organisation’s own headquarters refurbishment providing one of the clearest examples of how those principles can work in practice. (main image: Attendees gather in the networking lounge and exhibition area during the MBV’s Future Builders Conference. Credit image MBV.)

Held at the Crowne Plaza in Docklands on 31 August, the conference marked the 20th year of an event previously known as the Green Living Conference. Opening proceedings, MBV Technical Advisor for Sustainable and Future Built Environments Dr Philip Alviano said his remit now extended across energy efficiency and sustainability into offsite construction and modern methods of construction, reflecting the widening scope of the discussion.

The change was also reflected in the conference format, which this year incorporated separate residential and commercial streams. MBV chief executive Michaela Lihou said sustainability was no longer a distinct part of the construction conversation but increasingly influenced design, material selection, building performance and how the industry considered the full life of a building.

For Alviano, one of the continuing strengths of the event has been its ability to bring together people who may compete commercially but are nevertheless dealing with many of the same technical and practical challenges.

He described the conference as having grown from a relatively small group two decades ago, while retaining a collaborative character in which builders, designers, manufacturers and suppliers exchange experience.

Usha Iyer-Raniga argues for value beyond first use
Professor Usha Iyer-Raniga of RMIT University used her keynote presentation to push the discussion beyond conventional ideas about recycling.

Drawing on her work on Building a Circular Future in Australia: What, Why, and How, Iyer-Raniga argued that circular construction required the industry to think about how value could be maintained through production, design, use and ultimately the end of a building’s first life.

Her distinction was important: recycling is not necessarily the highest-value outcome. Materials can lose much of their original value when they are crushed, combined or converted into lower-grade applications.

Bricks, for example, can potentially be reused through multiple building lives if they are carefully deconstructed. If demolished and crushed, they may instead end up as road material.

“What we’re trying to do in the circular economy is to try and keep the value as much as possible,” she said, so materials can be used repeatedly rather than continually replaced with virgin resources.

That thinking has a particularly interesting relationship with modular and offsite construction.

While Iyer-Raniga’s presentation was not specifically an argument for modular building, several of her examples point towards principles already familiar to the offsite sector: designing components for assembly and disassembly, controlling material interfaces, maintaining information about individual components and considering whether buildings can be modified, relocated or reconfigured rather than demolished.

She cited Pikku-Finlandia in Helsinki, which was intentionally designed as a relocatable building, with materials intended to return to the system after its initial use. She also referenced the Circl building in Amsterdam, where modular construction was used to allow spaces within the building to change as requirements evolved.

For modular manufacturers, that offers a potentially significant extension of the usual productivity argument. Factory production can deliver repeatability and quality control, but circularity raises a further question: can the building system also be designed so that modules, panels and components retain value after their first application?

Iyer-Raniga also argued that Australia needed secondary markets, certification and better material information if recovered products were to become routinely usable construction inputs.

Fieldwork turns MBV headquarters into a working case study
The theoretical discussion was followed by a particularly relevant local example from Fieldwork Associate Directors Tim Brooks and Bettina Robinson, who detailed the refurbishment of Master Builders Victoria’s headquarters in East Melbourne.

The original MBV building dates from 1967 and had been altered several times during its life. By the time Fieldwork became involved in 2024, successive interventions had enclosed parts of the building, introduced additional plasterboard and compromised natural light in several areas.

Rather than begin with the assumption that the existing building needed wholesale replacement, the project team examined what could remain.

Robinson said the priorities included moving away from gas, reducing operational energy, improving water resilience, reducing waste, lowering embodied impacts and introducing circular materials — while also testing decisions against their financial return.

That led to some counter-intuitive outcomes. Replacing all of the existing upper-level single glazing, for example, was examined but rejected when analysis showed the payback did not justify the intervention. Insulating the east and west walls offered a better performance outcome for the investment.

Elsewhere, existing fabric was exposed and retained. Original brickwork was found behind cladding and plasterboard, while the building’s concrete and brass staircase was reopened rather than replaced. Fieldwork also retained the existing core, fire stairs and primary service locations.

One of the most revealing decisions was to create better accommodation by taking parts of the building away.

At the rear, a later two-storey addition was removed to create a courtyard and bring natural light back into training areas. Internally, a new void connected levels and opened views through the building.

As Robinson put it, taking part of the building away ultimately created more space, and better space.

Just as importantly, Fieldwork considered how the new work might be altered again in the future. Operable partitions and adaptable spaces were introduced so that subsequent changes could occur without another extensive demolition program.

That approach moves adaptive reuse close to the logic of good modular design: establish systems and interfaces that allow buildings to change without destroying the components from which they are made.

Brooks said Fieldwork also changed the way demolition itself was documented. Pre-tender demolition drawings were treated as resource schedules, with removed materials identified and linked to recycling, reuse or take-back pathways. The process required additional sorting on site and close coordination with builder Shape and individual trades.

The project ultimately recorded around 90 per cent of removed material by weight as recycled, although Brooks acknowledged that the category included different levels of recovery and that some processes, such as crushing concrete for road base, still reduced material value.

Fieldwork went further with materials being brought back into the building. Robinson described a preference for materials that were low-carbon, local, circular, durable, renewable and non-toxic. Recovered bricks were experimented with as aggregate for new tiles; Crafted Hardwoods was used as an upcycled timber product; recycled engineered timber flooring was incorporated; and magnesium board was mechanically fixed so it could potentially be removed again.

Not every experiment succeeded. A recycled-clothing acoustic panel could not obtain the required Group 1 fire certification in time for the project, while moving bricks offsite for crushing and then transporting the resulting aggregate to a tile manufacturer created a transport impact Robinson said the team would reconsider on another project.

Those difficulties were arguably as relevant as the successes.

They reinforced one of the central messages running through the Future Builders Conference: circular construction is not simply a question of specifying recycled materials. It depends on design, certification, supply chains, cost, logistics and decisions about how a building will change long after its first construction program is complete.

For the offsite and modular sector, the implications are equally practical. Designing for manufacture may be one part of industrialised construction; increasingly, designing for adaptation, disassembly and another life may become part of the same conversation.

Find Master Builders Victoria HERE