Green Gown Awards 2015 – Built Environment - University of Brighton - Highly Commended

Waste House

The Brighton Waste House is the first permanent carbon negative public building in Europe to be constructed from approximately 90% waste and surplus material. It is a 'live' design, research and construction project involving two separate academic institutions and over 500 students. A great part of construction and delivery work was undertaken by these students who had the chance to work, innovate and be part of a unique cross-sector collaborative partnership involving the community and voluntary sector, private businesses and public institutions.

The Waste House focuses attention on the Circular Economy by raising awareness of the material’s origin; environmental consequences; their potential for reuse; and where they would otherwise end up.

The University of Brighton promotes the strategy of ‘rethink, reduce, reuse, recycle’. The Waste House takes this one step further by stating, “There’s no such thing as waste, just stuff in the wrong place.”

Top 3 learnings

1 “There’s no such thing as waste, just stuff in the wrong place”

2 We didn't just raise awareness about waste - we delivered a zero waste building and ran a zero waste construction site, demonstrated new construction methodology and challenged design protocols. We tried to innovate every step of the way.

3 Include young people from different backgrounds, with different skills and ambitions in the design and construction as well as the monitoring and use of the project.

Videos

• Waste House (click to hide)