Fowler Street, Camperdown.
A terrace house built in 1904.
For more than a century it has done what terrace houses do. It has sheltered families, absorbed countless renovations, watched neighbourhoods change and quietly carried on. The floors have worn smooth beneath thousands of footsteps. The walls have held the stories of ordinary life.
Most renovations begin with demolition.
This one began with a question:
What if nothing became waste?
The goal for this project is ambitious - zero waste.
Not low waste. Not less waste.
Zero.
The brief, set by architect Alex Symes for his own home, is remarkably simple:
Nothing leaves the site.
Every brick. Every tile. Every piece of timber. Every fitting. Every material that comes out of this house including the sawdust extracted from a cut, must have a future.
That ambition changes everything.
Before and during the demolition phase, we spent weeks documenting what was already here. Every room. Every material. Every piece of timber. Species, condition, dimensions, quantity and provenance wherever it could be established.
More than eighty material types have now been catalogued through a digital Material Library we've built specifically for this project.
The catalogue comes first.
Dismantling comes second.
This is where Full Circle Design begins.
Not with drawings.
Not with furniture.
Not with what a building will become.
It begins with understanding what already exists.
Most demolition is designed for speed. Once materials are mixed together, broken apart and loaded into bins, much of their value disappears. History disappears with it.
We wanted a different outcome.
By documenting materials before they are removed, every item receives a digital record and a clear pathway forward. Nothing is left to chance. By the time a wall comes down, we already know where much of it is going next.
For the timber, that next chapter is particularly special.
Every piece of recovered timber from this project will return to the same address it came from.
Floorboards, framing, structural elements and joinery will be carefully recovered, processed where necessary, and transformed into furniture and architectural elements for the finished renovation.
A dining table.
Bed heads.
A bench seat.
Shelving.
A bath tub.
Joinery.
The building continues as itself, just in a different form.
What makes this project particularly meaningful is that the architect is also the owner.
Alex designed this renovation for his own family.
Every decision about what to retain, what to recover and what to transform has been made by someone who understands buildings deeply and still chose to start with a simple question:
What is already here, and what can it become?
That question sits at the heart of everything we do at The Wattle Road.
For years I've stood on demolition sites watching beautiful old timber disappear into skips. Timber that took a century to grow. Timber with another century of life left in it.
The losses are ordinary.
They're also entirely avoidable.
Full Circle Design grew from the belief that we can do better.
Not through slogans or certifications, but through a practical methodology that begins before demolition and continues until materials have been returned to use.
Behind the scenes, we've also been building the systems that make this possible.
Materials are documented at the point of recovery, tracked through storage, monitored during processing and connected back to the projects they eventually become part of.
It's not the most photogenic work.
But it's what turns a philosophy into a practice.
It's what makes circular construction measurable rather than aspirational.
The fit-out is still ahead of us.
When it arrives, timber that has quietly supported this house for more than 120 years will once again become part of daily life.
A table shared with family.
A shelf holding books.
A bench beside a window.
A bath tub to slow down in.
The same material.
The same address.
Continuing.
We'll continue sharing the journey as it unfolds.
Made With Care.