The first issue of Sustainability Works is available for you now

The first issue of Sustainability Works, the new publication dedicated to sustainable design for the built environment, has been launched by the team behind Works magazine in partnership with the Sustainable Design Collective (SDC). Edited by Joanna Knight, Sustainability Works has been created to inform, challenge and inspire the workplace and design community at a time when sustainability is moving beyond individual products and initiatives to reshape the way buildings and interiors are designed, specified, delivered and managed.

The first issue reflects that broad outlook, bringing together news, comment, interviews, case studies and in-depth features covering some of the most important developments in sustainable design. Its focus ranges from circularity, reuse and embodied carbon to product transparency, materials, social value and the systemic changes needed to turn environmental ambitions into meaningful action.

One of the issue’s major features examines the fast-emerging world of Digital Product Passports and what their arrival will mean for manufacturers, specifiers and customers. It looks beyond the technology itself to consider how better information about materials, carbon, circularity and end-of-life options can create genuine product transparency, with contributions and examples from companies already preparing for the change, including Camira, Colebrook Bosson Saunders, Sedus and Flokk.

The circular economy is a recurring theme throughout the issue. Waste Not explores new guidance designed to help the built environment treat existing buildings as repositories of materials and value rather than future waste streams, while Seconds Out tackles the stubborn image problem surrounding used office furniture and considers how reuse can become a mainstream part of workplace design.

A major case study demonstrates what this can mean in practice. Sustainability Works visits Grant Thornton UK’s London headquarters at 8 Finsbury Circus, where a reuse-first strategy has been integrated into the overall design approach. The project shows that reuse need not mean compromise, combining remanufacturing and repurposing with a contemporary workplace and wider social value initiatives.

Carbon is addressed from another perspective in One Step at a Time, which looks at new frameworks intended to make whole life carbon more understandable and actionable for built environment professionals. Elsewhere, the issue considers the social value created through workplace fit-out and showcases new thinking in materials, products, architecture and sustainable business from around the world.

The international perspective extends from City Walk Abuja, a major mixed-use development conceived around an ecological spine in the Nigerian capital, to Bangalore, where SDC co-founder Harsha Kotak reports on a Sustainable Design Collective discussion about the barriers that can prevent good sustainability intentions becoming reality. The debate highlights the need for earlier collaboration and for sustainability to be embedded in project delivery rather than added as a final layer.

The people shaping the industry are also central to the new title. The first issue meets Hightower chairperson and co-owner Natalie Hartkopf, alongside expert voices from design, manufacturing, property and sustainability.

Together, the stories demonstrate the philosophy behind Sustainability Works: sustainability is not a standalone discipline or a checklist, but a complex and interconnected challenge involving design, business, people, materials, economics and the environment. As Joanna Knight writes in her opening column, the publication aims to help break down silo thinking through knowledge sharing, collaboration and storytelling.

Sustainability Works is published four times a year by Insight Publishing in partnership with the Sustainable Design Collective. The first issue is available now in a digital format here and the print edition will be mailed out soon.

Main image: Flokk Offecct Soundsticks