ABSTRACT
Consumerism has become an increasingly visible threat to the environment. This chapter argues that the present revival of reuse apparent in many domains of design and development is in part a response to increasing ethical and environmental concerns about our unfolding environmental crisis, and in part a search for continuity, belonging, and identity in a world of such accelerated material, technological, and social change. Reflecting upon and borrowing from the past through reuse seeks to resist the erosion of memory, place, and identity that consumerism’s continuous quest for the new – and premature destruction of the ‘old’– must generate. Through a brief case study of a large automotive plant successfully repurposed as a multi-use ‘innovation hub’ in Adelaide, South Australia, the chapter concludes that design for sustainability must embrace the continuity, sense of place, and belonging that reuse can provide to attain both its more holistic social and environmental goals.
