We went to an event last night at Solus Tiles. A gathering of architects, designers, engineers, and thinkers. People who make things. People who should be asking: How do we make things better?
The guest speaker was Douglas McMaster, founder of Silo, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant. A man who doesn’t just talk about change - he builds it. With his hands. With his team. With his mind.
Douglas has a simple philosophy:
→ Waste is a failure of the imagination.
Let that sink in.
He spoke about bins. The fact that they are a human invention. That no other species creates waste. That the bin is a symbol of failure - of a system designed to be linear rather than circular.
At Silo, waste doesn’t exist. Not because it’s been “managed better,” but because the need for it has been designed out. No packaging. No unnecessary processing. Just smart, intentional choices. A compost bin that gives back to the earth. Glass bottles that don’t get thrown away but are milled down, repurposed, reborn.
We sat there listening - alongside Max McDonagh from AKT II, a structural engineer we collaborate with often, and Ian Hamilton and Sam Frith from Solus - and thought: This is the kind of thinking architecture needs.
Architecture has a waste problem. We design for demolition, not for reuse. We specify materials with no thought for what happens to them in 50 years. We demolish buildings when they could be reimagined. And every time, a bin appears.
A skip filled with plasterboard.
A dumpster of wasted offcuts.
A pile of bricks sent to landfill.
All because we didn’t design well enough.
Douglas talked about epiphanies - about moments that change everything. For him, it was seeing how Blue Planet exposed the damage plastic was doing to the world. Suddenly, his restaurant was filling up with people who wanted something different. They didn’t just want a meal. They wanted to believe in something.
And isn’t that the job of architecture too? To make people believe in something better?
Sean Ronnie Hill and Imran Jahn of RISE Design Studio with Max McDonagh of AKT II with Douglas McMaster of Silo London
At RISE Design Studio, we talk about the circular economy a lot. But Douglas reminded us that this isn’t a theory - it’s something we need to live, breathe, and build into every project.
→ What if demolition waste became raw material for new buildings?
→ What if every material we specified could be repurposed, just like Silo’s bottles?
→ What if we built for 100 years, not just for today?
Douglas has built a Fermentation Factory, where waste isn’t waste - it’s food for something new. What if architecture worked the same way? What if every building had a second, third, and fourth life built into it from day one?
Douglas said something else last night. He said, Find something that makes you feel alive. Dedicate yourself to it.
For him, it’s rethinking food.
For us, it’s rethinking buildings.
The work is clear. We can accept the way things are, or we can build something better. Something that doesn’t rely on bins to clean up our mistakes. Something that looks beyond the immediate project, the immediate budget, the immediate convenience.
Silo has proven that zero waste is possible. It’s not a dream. It’s just design thinking applied to a broken system.
So the question we left with last night was this: What’s stopping us from doing the same in architecture?
Big thanks to Solus Tiles for hosting and to Douglas, Max, Ian, and Sam for pushing us to think harder.
Now, let’s get to work.
If you would like to talk through your project with the team, please do get in touch at architects@risedesignstudio.co.uk or give us a call on 020 3947 5886
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