The reuse of existing materials will surely play an important part in the shift to more a sustainable construction industry.
Perhaps that shift will see the widespread adoption of materials banks, large scale resource-based design and an AI-enabled circular supply chain revolution.
Maybe our planning system, building control industry, insurance providers, mortgage lenders and homebuyers will become enlightened and open to alternative systems of taste, indicators of status and approaches to risk.
Quite possibly, Weetabix brown bio-based materials will dominate, finally winning the aesthetic battle against the urban technicolour faction of the party.
Almost certainly though, everything will look the same but have better data. And whatever it looks like, it will still make money for Saint-Gobain and Lafarge.
However, reusing building materials is not a new thing, and I'm not talking about the stone of vanquished medieval castles being repurposed as churches or pubs.
In the B-road industrial estates of the Midlands and scrappy wooded backwaters of Kent, a hundred thousand pallets of old bricks, quarry tiles and roofing slates await their next deployment. Many of these reclamation places still answer the phone, only to tell you come and have a look for yourself. You should go. There is gold here.
On Merseyside, and outside Glasgow, gargantuan hangers contain infinite battalions of high quality period doors, organised by size. In North Wales and Northumberland, octogenarians have cornered Facebook Marketplace, supplementing their pensions by trading stable pavers and decorative ridge tiles from their sheds and carports. Many will insist that you stay for coffee. One wouldn't allow me to leave without a full sit-down lunch.
What you will find are truly 'materials in transit', carrying traces of memory as they travel from wall to wall, floor to floor, roof to roof. They exist because their value is easily understood and their quality is tangible, and because they can survive in conditions of damp neglect for a long time. They don't have materials passports or data sheets, but patina and atmosphere, and a story.
If you find something made of wood, it's probably much better wood than you will find anywhere now. If you find something which has been made with skill, that skill is probably now very rare or prohibitively expensive or both.
Sometimes I buy such things. Sometimes materials are rescued from one project for use in the next. The continuity feels good. Occasionally I know what I'm going to use them for but, more often, a current or future project adapts to receive them.
You can see some of the items currently in the Deposit here: