In with the Old: Why Building Coalition Says Reuse Must Trump Redevelopment

An alliance of property developers, architects and academics is mounting pressure on governments to abandon the demolition-first mentality, arguing that huge carbon savings and economic benefits are being squandered by current planning policies. The cross-sector coalition has produced a list of 24 recommendations calling for fundamental policy changes that would make building adaptation the default option before redevelopment is considered. The initiative brings together such major businesses as Arup, Lendlease and Pelligra as well as government agencies and university researchers. David Ness, a professor from the University of South Australia’s Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure and Resource Management, co-founded the World Sufficiency Lab in Paris. He tells The Urban Developer that current approaches ignore the environmental costs embedded in new construction. “In new construction, the upfront embodied carbon is about 60 or 70 per cent of the building’s total lifetime carbon footprint,” Ness says. “In, say, a 38-storey tower, the embodied carbon would be equivalent to 500 rail cars full of coal.” The coalition’s formation comes as Adelaide makes practical progress through its Adaptive Reuse City Housing Initiative (ARCHI), which has identified more than 150 buildings across Adelaide and North Adelaide with potential for housing conversion. The program provides grants of up to $25,000 for design and documentation and up to $50,000 for construction works. ARCHI project manager Ellen Liebelt says developing the right methodology was a challenge, with real estate listings proving valuable for identifying vacant buildings. “This data shows there are opportunities there,” Liebelt says. “When we began this project, I did some early research to see if similar studies had been conducted in other state or council areas to see what we could learn from others but I couldn’t really find anything comparable.” ▲ David Ness: Current approaches ignore the environmental costs embedded in new construction. The ARCHI initiative reflects growing concern about the construction industry’s environmental impact. And with the building industry representing about one-third of global carbon emissions, Ness argues that Australia’s continued preference for new construction over adaptive reuse makes little sense. He points to Adelaide’s 38-storey Walker Corporation tower proposal near Parliament House as an example of misguided priorities. “When we’ve got massive vacancies in office space, it just doesn’t make sense,” he says. New construction then draws tenants from existing buildings, worsening vacancy rates in older stock. The coalition wants adaptive reuse to be the first consideration ahead of redevelopment across housing, commercial and community functions. Its recommendations target six key areas: policy leadership, carbon accounting, database creation, economic incentives, design standards, and compliance frameworks. On carbon accounting, it calls for better recognition of embodied carbon savings from reuse compared to demolition and rebuild. Current policies inadequately value these savings while overemphasising operational energy efficiencies in new buildings, Ness says. The recommendations propose requiring proponents of new projects to estimate embodied carbon at the planning approval stage rather than during building documentation when approval has already been granted. ▲ The Walker Corp skyscraper is expected to accommodate up to 5000 office workers and another 100 retail workers. The coalition recognises that economic barriers are the biggest challenge. Pelligra is working on adaptive reuse projects in Adelaide but Ness says the group reported that “the margins weren’t quite high enough”. “Nevertheless, I take my hat off to them—at least they’re doing it,’ he says. The coalition’s recommendations directly address these profit challenges through tax relief and reduced charges to acknowledge environmental savings from building reuse, alongside government subsidies for early investigative works and feasibility studies to address unknowns that often derail projects. Regulatory barriers pose the biggest challenges, with developers citing seismic risk rulings, accessibility requirements and thermal performance standards as major obstacles. Ness believes these barriers can be overcome through risk-based approaches that prioritise upgrades according to safety priorities rather than requiring comprehensive compliance immediately, as he did when he was South Australia’s first building certifier. “We produced a document for government agencies which looked at all the areas of compliance—not just compliance, but also the needs of the building and the owners,” Ness says. “We had a balanced approach and prioritised all the biggest gaps in compliance. It was like a dashboard where a building might have a big gap with fire safety, which was high priority, and then some other gap with disability access, with energy efficiency, which wasn’t as high a priority.” This proved successful with Adelaide’s former Royal Adelaide Hospital where seismic experts from San Francisco reviewed and then recommended partial upgrades addressing life safety risks without requiring full compliance. Delete “What it dealt with was stopping bits falling off the facade and killing people. It addressed life safety risks predominantly in a major earthquake,” Ness says. “This meant the hospital could continue operating safely while we addressed the most critical risks without the massive cost of full compliance. “Then those still important but not life-threatening upgrades could be made incrementally over time.” The coalition believes similar pragmatic solutions can be applied across the adaptive reuse sector. It also advocates for database creation to identify vacant precincts, buildings and land suitable for adaptive reuse. This publicly accessible resource would capture building ages and conditions, creating a pipeline for adaptive reuse projects while redirecting investment towards existing stock rather than new development. Design recommendations encourage developers to plan for future adaptability in any new construction, with applications required to demonstrate reuse potential. The coalition cites the “six Ss” framework developed by Arup, examining buildings through urban Systems, Structure, Services, Skin, Space (fit out) and “the Stuff that goes inside”. This recognises that different building elements change at different rates, with structure remaining constant while fitout can be regularly modified to meet evolving needs. Hames Sharley associate director Yaara Plaves, who is also head of the National Sustainability Forum (NSF), wants to see more cross-sector collaboration in addressing systemic challenges. “Siloed expertise creates blind spots and biases,” Plaves says, adding that bringing different participants together builds trust and leads to practical solutions and “is essential to bring about sustainable, demonstrable solutions”. ▲ Hames Sharley associate director Yaara Plaves. The coalition has the support of the Australian-French Association for Research and Innovation, which has shared learnings from France’s innovative “Sufficiency” policies now enshrined in French Energy Law. These policies focus on meeting needs with “enough but not too much”. Suggested compliance reforms include eliminating or adjusting minimum standards for balconies, parking and windows to facilitate adaptive reuse while maintaining occupant amenity. For less critical safety matters, the coalition suggests allowing buildings to meet standards progressively through planned upgrade schedules rather than demanding instant full compliance. The coalition will share its recommendations with South Australian policymakers and is exploring the creation of an Australian Sufficiency Lab at Adelaide University to serve as a national research centre for adaptive reuse research across multiple sectors. Ness argues that urgency drives the need for immediate action on embodied carbon reduction rather than waiting for long-term operational savings from new energy-efficient buildings. “At the moment we should be focusing on reducing all the upfront carbon and resource consumption over the next few years because of the planetary crisis,” he says. “The IPCC said we can’t wait—we have to reduce all this now, particularly in countries like ours.” The coalition’s success in South Australia could provide a template for national adoption, Ness says, potentially transforming adaptive reuse from a marginal proposition into a profitable mainstream development option across Australia’s urban development and carbon reduction efforts. “It’s time now to really work together with the industry and developers,” Ness says. “We really need to get with it on this. “It’s got benefits for developers, governments, and the community. We need to work with developers to find ways they can do this and still profit.”

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