That sensibility is clear in the work of architects such as Kevin Carmody of London’s Carmody Groarke (for full disclosure, he is also my cousin). Carmody has built much of his reputation on adaptive reuse: reworking existing buildings instead of replacing them. He reworked the Urquhart Building, a 32,000 sqm Brutalist structure on a former World War II munitions site in Boston Spa, into a key part of the British Library’s redeveloped campus.⁴ Doing so allowed him to save thousands of tonnes of waste and reduce costs. It’s true that my hierarchy is a moral and design preference. But it’s also a pragmatic financial framework. The earliest decisions on structure and materials lock in risk for the building's life and the communities it affects. It’s a risk-based approach. A building’s embodied carbon is a case in point. Roughly half of it sits in the superstructure, so an early call to adaptively reuse existing structures or use low-carbon concrete or mass timber is one of the largest strategic decisions a client will make.
Half the carbon is decided early Embodied carbon across major building components,
Superstructure Dominant embodied carbon category.
In the same way, carefully taken decisions can also stand in for big budgets. Chairing last year’s National Architecture Awards jury in Australia, I saw how architects are using tight budgets to meet the social, environmental and economic needs of complex projects.⁵ Many of the best projects challenged the notion that affordability must come at the expense of quality or dignity for those who use them. They were the physical result of optimism meeting discipline. At scale, housing affordability, climate urgency and social fragmentation are where cities are solved or scaled. Good design is how we respond. Those same early choices decide whether a place isolates people or brings them together. The importance of that doesn’t show up on the build cost, but it becomes value that compounds for years. You can see those good choices in the way that a city that works knits together. Applied creativity moves beyond individual buildings to create systems of care and connection: cities that endure and support prosperity. Each human-made space and city tells a story about what we value. In a world growing more volatile by almost every economic, political and environmental measure, the cost of not using an architect is only rising. The best architecture delivers multiple returns that flow into long- term stability and prosperity. Bring in good design at the start, and what looked like an expense becomes the reason the project works.
In order of importance, I try to convince clients to build nothing if they can rework what they already have, build less where they can, and build well where they must. Unsurprisingly, I’ve never finished a project with a client unhappy that I’d saved them money.
Take the European worker sweltering through a heatwave in an office made for a colder climate. That building’s ability to retain heat was fixed years before anyone moved in. The worker, their colleagues and their employer will pay for it in comfort and in energy bills for decades. When a building or space is being discussed, the members of the project responsible for finance, emissions or planning often pull in different directions. Instinct might dictate that the architect, the person responsible for navigating those contradictory forces, should try to cut that tension or simplify it. But instead of trading one choice for another, we have to serve every stakeholder at once, and do so early. More than just designing buildings, architects design the decisions that shape a project’s risk and long-term value. More than ever, architects consider whether a build even needs to happen. Since I learned the principle of
Substructure Envelope Services Finishes External works
A smarter brief starts before the building
Build wel l Invest in quality, resilience and long-term performance
References
Build less Reduce footprint, materials and operational demand
1. IBM. n.d. "IBM Design." IBM Heritage. https://www.ibm.com/history/design-program 2. Accenture Song. 2025. Applied Creativity—and How to Lead It. By Nick Law. https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/song/applied-creativity 3. Pritzker Architecture Prize. 2002. "Glenn Murcutt." The Hyatt Foundation. https://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/2002 4. Carmody Groarke. n.d. "British Library, Boston Spa." https://carmodygroarke.com/work/british-library-boston-spa 5. Australian Institute of Architects. 2025. "2025 National Architecture Awards Jury Announced." March 24. https://www.architecture.com.au/archives/news_media_articles/2025-national- architecture-awards-jury-announced
“touching the earth lightly” from Glenn Murcutt (one of my architectural heroes), it’s governed how I think about the genuine needs of a project.³
Build nothing Optimise, repurpose or reconfigure existing assets
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