169 Bailey Bestul: imaginative reuse of architectural components to create exciting and inspiring buildings

Circular Economy Podcast

Bailey Bestul explains how imaginative reuse of architectural components can create exciting, unique and inspiring buildings. Bailey is a registered architect, researcher and author based in New York City.

His book, Reuse of Architectural Components, published by Routledge, was inspired by Bailey’s extensive research throughout Europe after he was awarded a Fulbright grant by the Netherland-America Foundation.

Bailey holds a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University, where he graduated top of his class and was awarded the AIA Medal for Academic Excellence. He has worked in design firms in Minnesota, California and New York, and has completed residential and commercial projects throughout Southern California.

His company, post-Architecture, specializes in residential and small-scale commercial projects across the United States. Bailey’s work has been featured in Dezeen, Forbes, the LA Times, Yahoo! News, DAMN Magazine and on The Design Network.

Bailey talks us through the 3 sections of the book, covering Planning Strategies, Assembly Techniques and Finishing. Each section has 3 themes for each section, with some intriguing chapter headings, such as Palliative architecture, thick architecture, and Dirty, icky, yucky architecture, and we hear a bit about each of those.

The book is full of examples, both modern and historical, many of which are from highly respected architectural practices around the world. Bailey draws on reuse practices from different cultures and contexts, too, including the Japanese art of Kintsugi.

We discuss how architects, constructors and building owners are getting on board with circularity and reuse, and what might be getting in the way of ambitious circular approaches, and ask what architects, building owners and planners can do to help raise awareness of the benefits of reuse.

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Read on for more on our guest and links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention.

Links we mention in the episode:

Links for our guest:

• Bailey Bestul’s book: Reuse of Architectural Components https://www.routledge.com/Reuse-of-Architectural-Components/Bestul/p/book/9781032841182
• Bailey Bestul’s website: https://www.post-arch.com/
• Bailey Bestul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baileybestul/

Books, people and organisations we mentioned

• Kogan Page is offering an exclusive extra discount on pre-orders for the new, completely revised and updated edition of A Circular Economy Handbook: How to Build a More Resilient, Competitive and Sustainable Business. The new (third) edition will be out on 3^rd November and to get 30% off, you need to use the discount code PUBMON30, and order by 2^nd November 2025 – here’s the link: https://www.koganpage.com/CircEcon3.

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