In this article, Madlen and Adam provide a new approach to circular economy in architecture based on the juxtaposition of historical sources and ethnographic data. We bring into dialogue historical practices of rubble reuse in Warsaw after the Second World War with contemporary efforts to salvage components in buildings slated for demolition in Vienna. For past and present reuse practices, we uncover and scrutinise a complex social and bodily reality often obscured by the images of seamless and endless circulation of construction materials promoted by policymakers, industry leaders, architecture professionals, and positivist academic researchers. Theoretically, the article engages with reuse through a new materialism lens. This enables to see that the ›distributed agency‹ (Jane Bennett) within human-material assemblages actually defines the possibilities of reuse at different stages and on different sites.