Taking Circularity 180 Degrees

Making reuse and circularity repeatable, scalable and efficient is not without its challenges. Especially in an economic model and an industry like the built environment, that was set up to move linearly. But after seeing how much waste construction produced, the team at the design-build firm 180 Degrees was motivated to do something about it. Where there were barriers, they saw opportunities––opportunities to expand their services, skill set, and creativity. Over the past 25 years, after adding building services to their architecture firm, they've steadily taken on more challenging reuse projects. Along that journey, they also added an in-house fabrication team, The Guild, which up-leveled their ability to reimagine materials. In this episode, James Trahan, AIA, a partner and principal at 180 Degrees, talks about some of the challenges of reuse in the built environment and how mindset (and storage) play a big part in overcoming them.