In 2009 Korean artist Choi Jeong-Hwa created '1,000 Doors' by cladding the scaffolding around a tower block in Seoul with 1,000 reclaimed doors. Glass was removed from all the glazed doors, but the old door furniture seems to have been left attached. Choi Jeong-Hwa said, "I could not really draw so I did not think I could become a painter, but I really liked walking. So I used to walk between streets and narrow alleys and discover garbage piles and construction sites. I realized that normal people built and created things better than artists or professionals. Plus, what they were making was more natural. I decided against becoming an artist and decided instead to be an ordinary person who thinks like an artist."
 
Salvo estimates that every year Britain removes 2 million doors from demolition sites and refurbishment projects of which 10,000 are saved for reuse. This is the equivalent of destroying 8,000 old doors every working day, which would be a building clad in doors eight times the size of Choi Jeong-Hwa's '1,000 Doors' project - every day. Many of the 8,000 doors are made from tropical hardwood.
 
The doors reclaimed by the salvage sector usually languish in salvage yards for years before finding a customer, if they ever do, because: fire and building regulations can prevent reuse - indeed they are responsible for the removal of many perfectly good old doors which should not be removed in the first place; the shortage of reclaimed doors of standard sizes coupled with designers not able or not willing to specify the mixed sizes and styles of reclaimed doors which are readily available; lack of support for reuse from architects, mainstream construction, government procurers, local authority planners and from conservationists who seem repelled by, rather than supportive of, the reuse of demolition salvage.
 
In another installation 'Get together, Gather', Choi Jeong-Hwa mobilised students to collect 2 million old plastic bottles which were then strung onto ropes and studded to the 1988 Seoul Olympic Stadium making it jewel-bedecked with reused waste. Right now the UK Olympics is mired in argument over the sponsorship of the stadium's, presumably new, plastic curtain walling by Dow Chemicals and its connection to the Bhopal disaster. The organising committee could take inspiration from Choi Jeong-Hwa's 'Get together. Gather' by pulling a reuse rabbit out the hat, even at this late stage, and turning the stadium curtain wall into a beacon of salvage and reclamation for 2012. Some chance.