Entering the System.

What a Circularity Audit Really Is (and Isn’t).

Entering the work

I didn’t step into circularity audits as a reinvention of my practice. It felt more like a natural extension of work I was already doing—working within complex systems, navigating existing frameworks, and trying to make thoughtful decisions inside real-world constraints.

Two moments converged. The first was the opportunity to partner with a strong, deeply collaborative team on a New York City Economic Development Corporation project aligned with the NYCEDC Circular Design and Construction Guidelines. The second was far older: encountering The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard back in 2007. That film lodged a quiet but persistent question in my mind—one that stayed with me through years of architectural practice.

As an architect, I had spent decades designing buildings made almost entirely of newly extracted and processed materials. But I hadn’t spent nearly enough time asking: Where did these materials come from? Who was affected by their extraction and manufacturing? And what happens to them when buildings change or come apart?  Those questions—about health, equity, and finite planetary resources—never really went away.

When circularity audits (also know as salvage assessments or pre-demolition audits) entered my field of view, I was hopeful. I assumed there might be a standardized process, or at least a shared framework—something imperfect but usable—where the main work would be gathering information and offering recommendations. I expected the structure to exist already.

It didn’t.

The reality check

In practice, a circularity audit in New York City is far less about a tidy methodology and far more about careful documentation.

The work involves systematically cataloging existing building components—interior finishes, façade materials, furnishings, fixtures, and equipment, and sometimes site elements like railings or hardscape. For each item, we gather basic but critical information: photographs, dimensions, material type, location, and quantities. From there, we approximate weights and estimate the carbon emissions associated with producing those materials.

At its core, the audit asks a simple but powerful question:

Which materials can be reused as originally intended—therefore retaining the highest level of embodied carbon investment—and which ones might find second or third lives through other means?

This is where the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) 2017 circular economy framework concepts of the “9 Rs” becomes helpful, offering a spectrum of possibilities from direct reuse down to recycling or disposal. Take New York City’s iconic wooden water towers as an example. The wood used to construct them required a specific amount of energy and carbon to harvest, mill, and assemble. When those towers are carefully disassembled, the material may no longer serve its original function—but it might become interior paneling, millwork, or architectural accents. The carbon isn’t erased; it’s carried forward, albeit at a different level of value.

Source: RLI 2015; Edited by PBL

What a circularity audit does not do is provide absolute precision. This is not yet an exact science. There is no globally agreed-upon methodology for calculating embodied carbon at this level of detail. In the U.S., groups like the Carbon Leadership Forum are advancing the conversation; in Europe, resources like The Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) database are widely used. But the field is still evolving, and certainty is limited.

One of the most common misunderstandings I encounter is the assumption that audit recommendations are mandates. They’re not. In New York City—and really across the U.S.—we are still learning how to gather this data, how to interpret it responsibly, and how to offer guidance that reflects both opportunity and showcase the local constraints. Circularity audits are not an “on switch” for automatic reuse; they are a way of making possibilities visible.

The systems already in place

When I began this work in earnest, I was struck by how few resources existed—particularly in the public-sector context. Aside from the NYCEDC guidelines released in 2024, there was little formal guidance available. Those guidelines set a precedent and are aspirational, but they don’t yet prescribe detailed processes or define clear end deliverables for design and construction teams.

This isn’t a critique—it’s a reflection of where the field is. Circularity is emerging faster than the systems that support it.

What became clear very quickly was that my role was not to disrupt existing structures—contracts, schedules, procurement rules, risk tolerance, public accountability—but to interpret within them. To research what might be possible. To help teams catalogue information in ways that support future reuse. And, ultimately, to reduce extraction and environmental harm without pretending the system doesn’t exist.

Working at the edges

The influence in this work lives at the edges.

It shows up through research, through careful documentation, through collaboration with design and construction teams willing to explore disassembly alongside traditional demolition. It depends on early conversations, curious clients, and contractors open to learning new approaches—often without clear precedent.

“Fulfilling existing frames of success” means meeting project goals as they are defined today—on schedule, within budget, accountable to public standards—while quietly expanding what success might include tomorrow. It means recognizing that a circularity audit isn’t only about carbon calculations. It’s about learning how to design buildings now with their future disassembly already in mind.

Holding the questions

The mindset that keeps me grounded in this work is curiosity. A willingness to learn unfamiliar systems. An interest in how people collaborate under uncertainty. A belief that progress doesn’t always come from clarity—but from staying engaged long enough for clarity to emerge.

The questions I’m holding at this stage are simple, and unresolved:

• How can we help New York City better understand the purpose and potential of circularity audits? 

• And how do we support design teams through uncertainty—building confidence that exploration is worth the effort, even before processes are fully defined?

Those questions don’t yet have fixed answers. But they’re shaping the work that comes next.