Radical Tectonics – a multi-scalar approach to material circularity through community empowerment, building re-use, and material regeneration

Abstract

Radical Tectonics is a multi-scalar approach to improving the short- and long-term outcomes of sustainable design and circular economies. Community empowerment, building reuse, and material regeneration are three fundamental principles of a radical tectonics which operates simultaneously at the macro, meso, and micro scale. Three tactics define our integrated approach to radical tectonics: building material choices and labor practices which favor the health, safety, and prosperity of communities; urban design policies which favor the re-habilitation, re-use, re-programming and re-mining of existing structures; building construction innovations that channel the adoption of traditional, craft-based, local, low-energy, and regenerative materials. Not only does each scale introduce an original interpretation of tectonics (as a form of built justice, a practice of urban re-mining, and regenerating matter) but their integration speaks to the question of ‘radicality’ which at its simplest form references change or action with essential, fundamental, and all-encompassing outcomes. In this sense, this collaboratively written paper introduces a methodological approach whose multi-scaler insistence on circularity is essential to its role as transformative agent.