Zero Footprint Repurposing Wins Melbourne Design Week Award

A world-first hub for repurposing waste from construction and demolition has been awarded the 2022 Melbourne Design Week Award, presented by Mercedes-Benz. 

With almost half of waste worldwide coming from construction and demolition, Zero Footprint Repurposing by Revival Projects, presented as part of Melbourne Design Week, seeks to make sustainable construction alternatives more  accessible to everyone by providing one of the world’s first free repurposing hubs to fill a vital gap in the industry by facilitating the storage and reuse of demolished materials, which would otherwise become landfill. 

Founded by Robbie Neville in 2016, Revival Projects has already salvaged hundreds of tonnes in construction and demolition waste across Melbourne channelling it into furniture, interior, and architectural projects including R.M. Williams stores across the country, Industry Beans new Fitzroy flagship, and the 2020 demolition and salvage with Hip V. Hype, who were heading up the development of a Six Degrees Architects-designed block of 22 apartments in South Melbourne.  

This first hub, opened in 2020, and in operation for a year, was situated immediately adjacent to the Hip V. Hype site, and saw Revival Projects repurpose the 2000 lineal meters of timber beams into several local projects including a  whisky bar, a ceramic studio, a burger bar and in sustainable furniture design workshops for women, which were run from the hub. The remaining timber will be used in feature elements of an 8 story Perri Projects development, designed by Tandem Studio, which is now under construction on the site of the South Melbourne hub. 

The second iteration of the hub, presented during Melbourne Design Week 2022, is situated in Islington Street, Collingwood in a 100-year-old, 1500 square-metre warehouse, that will be demolished in 2024. True to their cause, Revival Projects, who are utilising the space in the interim, is working with Grimshaw Architects, the architects of the site’s future development, to repurpose the existing materials from the warehouse into the new development.

Visit Revival Projects’ Website

‘Zero Footprint Repurposing is a project of ambitious  scale with global importance. Offering a unique platform for the design and construction industry to make a sustainable impact, the project is a real catalyst for positive change. Revival Projects draws attention to an important  issue, demonstrating that the value of a design is not only in its function or aesthetic, but also in its environmental  impact.’—Tony Ellwood AM, Director, National Gallery of Victoria