AD's ‘Circular Revolution’: Watershed event calls for built environment Circular Economy

On Tuesday 14th October 2025, more than 400 key industry leaders, policymakers and innovators gathered for UK Architects Declare’s ‘Circular Revolution’ event, marking a watershed industry call for a move to a Circular Economy in the built environment and beyond.

We took over all 32 pods of the London Eye, with the best and brightest representing the built environment from a wide range of areas - from contractors to acousticians, architects to real estate, engineers to energy consultants. As well as our 4 lead sponsors, 18 organisations booked a pod specifically to engage their invited guests in the transition to a circular economy. We made a symbolic rotation, we brainstormed, we challenged, and we documented, with each pod assigned an AD facilitator to discuss circularity themes and to gather feedback into industry pledges and government asks, before we amassed at Sustainable Ventures for rousing speeches to kickstart the circular revolution…

The waste generated by the UK construction sector in a single year could fill the River Thames from Imperial Wharf to the Thames Barrier! Whilst some of this is recovered, much of it leaves the construction sector, devalued, downcycled and flowing into other sectors, often sent overseas. This leaves the UK construction sector bringing in more and more virgin materials, contributing to increasing carbon emissions and ecological degradation.

We’d like to thank our sponsors for their generous donations: Lazari, Mace, Marks Barfield Architects, and Structure Tone. We would also like to thank Sustainable Ventures for their support in making the evening such a great success.

We had keynote talks from leading voices in the field, highlighting the pivotal actions we need to take to unite industry leaders and demonstrate to government and policy-makers that the built environment sector is ready to lead the transition to a circular economy.

Prof Paul Ekins OBE, Deputy Chair of the Government’s Circular Economy Taskforce

"What examples of best practice? That's going to be really really really important, because above all what our civil servants want to know is does this stuff work, is it going to actually do what it says on the tin in terms of both the economics and the environment..."

Joanna Dimitriadis, Engineering Lead at Skanska

"The Circular Revolution event sent a strong message that the UK construction industry wants to embed circularity in the built environment - and that achieving success requires the collective support of clients, consultants, contractors, and policymakers!"

Julia Barfield, co-designer of the London Eye and champion of sustainable design

“We are excited to have brought together so many of the leading voices -225 organisations, 450 individuals - across the built environment:- developers, politicians, contractors, consultants, think tanks, activists, voluntary groups and deconstruction contractors, as well as members of the government’s Circular Economy Task Force. Conversations of top down and bottom ideas of how we can realise the Circular Revolution abounded. Next step – make our Call to Action a reality!!”

Duncan Baker-Brown ARB RIBA, architect, author, and circular economy pioneer “The UK construction sector is primed to do the right thing because we have the collective knowledge to design out waste and to turn those long-established linear systems into closed looped circular systems. And with DEFRA’s forthcoming Circular Economy Strategy for England we will have the legislation required to enable us to develop an authentic low carbon built environment sooner rather than later.”

We identified that to shift course, we need both top-down policy interventions and bottom-up industry innovation. The evening was both a celebration and a call to action: a chance to unite industry leaders, inspire systemic change, and demonstrate to the government that the sector is ready to lead the shift to a circular economy.

Things are in motion, and we will ensure we keep up the momentum - we will be sharing lots of detail about the next steps in this campaign, the data we collected and our work with the Circular Economy Taskforce. In the meantime you can read our Call to Action.

A proportion of the funds raised at our event will be reinvested into industry initiatives that accelerate this transformation.