Spotted: On average, for every square metre of brick produced, it’s estimated that about 26 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide emissions are released. Once more, the firing of these bricks in kilns is one of the largest stationary sources of black carbon – a significant and dangerous contributor to air pollution.
Due to their high carbon footprint, bricks are playing their own part in global warming and increased instances of extreme weather. Ironically, because such weather events can damage buildings, it means that even more bricks and other buildings materials need to be manufactured in carbon-intensive processes to make repairs. Hoping to provide a greener, more sustainable alternative is Aussie company Earthbuilt.
The new, carbon-friendly method of building houses, as well as the new materials Earthbuilt uses, aim to not only negate the majority of carbon emissions associated with bricks, but also introduce a more durable and stronger house. An Earthbuilt home is graded at the highest level of Australian fireproofing, meaning the technology can also be utilised in constructing miles of firebreaking. Additionally, the non-Newtonian fluid properties of Earthbuilt’s structures mean that the walls self-heal rather than crack under pressure, this also makes them earthquake resistant.
The technology relies on machines that lay the fill (including gravel, sand, and clay) over layer upon layer of Earthbuilt’s material – which resembles a roll of fabric, but is in reality a tensile membrane – until a wall is built up. This wall holds incredible strength due to the many layers that make it up, as well as holding great resistance to movement thanks to the material’s properties itself. This process is called terre armée, or reinforced Earth in English. Due to the process of constructing Earthbuilt walls being machine-led, there is a large reduction in labour costs, as well as in the material costs and overall carbon footprint.
The company is just finishing its MVP prototype and is currently searching for investment and manufacturing partners. Next, the ambition is to look at other big polluters in construction and develop more sustainable solutions.
Springwise has also spotted other innovations in building materials like these recycled plastic tiles that look like clay as well as these robots and AI that speed up homebuilding.
Danish toymaker Lego has abandoned its pilot programme to make recycled plastic bricks from discarded bottles after projections suggested that, adopted at scale, the material would ultimately have a higher carbon footprint.
But after two years of testing, Lego has now scrapped the project as calculations indicated that retooling its factories to process rPET – instead of the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) used to form 80 per cent of its bricks – would ultimately generate more emissions over the product’s lifecycle.
Lego scrapped efforts to make its bricks from recycled plastic bottles
“It’s like trying to make a bike out of wood rather than steel,” Lego’s head of sustainability Tom Brooks told the Financial Times, which broke the story.
“In order to scale production, the level of disruption to the manufacturing environment was such that we needed to change everything in our factories. After all that, the carbon footprint would have been higher. It was disappointing.”
The rPET also requires large amounts of energy for processing and drying, Brooks explained, as well as additional chemicals so it can rival the durability of normal Lego blocks.
Instead of repurposing plastic bottles, Lego says it is now looking to find bio-based and recycled substitutes for the individual chemicals that make up ABS, as well as investigating alternative solutions.
“We remain fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032,” a spokesperson for the company told Dezeen.
“We are currently testing and developing Lego bricks made from a range of alternative sustainable materials, including other recycled plastics and plastics made from alternative sources such as e-methanol.”
The prototype bricks were made from recycled PET (rPET)
The company is also exploring the potential of bioplastics, which has formed some of the flora found in Lego kits since 2018 as well as the company’s recent Botanical Collection.
However, Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told the FT he believes no single material will be a silver bullet solution.
“We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials,” he said. “It’s just not been possible to find a material like that.”
Instead, part of Lego’s solution will be a focus on incremental emissions reductions as well as a takeback scheme, which the company is hoping to develop over the next few years so that unwanted bricks can be directly reused in new sets or recycled if they are no longer functional.
The news comes only a month after the company pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Previously, Lego had only committed to a 37 per cent emissions reduction by 2032 compared to 2019.
Pedro Calle and El Sindicato Arquitectura design Casa Perucho
Designer Pedro Calle and El Sindicato Arquitectura consrtuct Casa Perucho, a single-family house nestled in Perucho, a rural enclave within the Metropolitan District of Quito, Ecuador. Embracing its natural surroundings of mountains and green landscapes, the residence harmoniously coexists with nature.
The main design principle revolves around fostering an intimate connection with the natural environment while enveloping its inhabitants in a shelter-like space. The project takes advantage of the mountain vistas employing expansive windows on the western facade. Additionally, the development ensures privacy through a continuous skin of bricks unfolding from the southern facade, transitioning into the roof, and eventually covering the northern facade. The red brick protruding formation shields the interior from both neighbors and the adjacent street, resulting in a secure living environment.
all images by Francesco Russo unless stated otherwise
Casa Perucho develops a simple and efficient layout
The design team meticulously outlines the spatial arrangement of Casa Perucho. The ground floor is dedicated to communal spaces, including a well-appointed kitchen, a living area, a dining space, a convenient bathroom, and a sheltered outdoor deck. The upper floor encompasses a bedroom, a versatile workspace, a welcoming guest area, and a well-equipped bathroom. Designed with an emphasis on simplicity and efficiency, a prefabricated structure takes center stage. Comprising robust wooden frames, this construction method ensures a seamless assembly process while minimizing environmental impact and reducing mobilization and on-site manufacturing costs.
Casa Perucho nestles in Perucho, a rural enclave within the Metropolitan District of Quito, Ecuador
a continuous skin of bricks enfolds the two-story residence
the red brick protruding formation shields the interior from both neighbors and the adjacent street
Spotted: Plastic waste is not only a problem in developed nations – it is a major problem globally, including in Africa, where it contaminates freshwater sources and has a big health impact.
Brickify is a Nigerian company working to solve this issue – and tackle homelessness – with one solution. The company collects plastic waste from families and individuals in exchange for cash. The waste is then used to manufacture plastic bricks for use as a construction material.
The bricks are made up of around 90 per cent of plastic waste, along with other materials that give them great strength and fire-resistant properties. The bricks interlock like Lego toys, so they can be used in construction without any additional materials. They are around 30 to 50 per cent cheaper than conventional bricks and will not decompose, so are very long-lasting.
Brickify has received small amounts of funding in the form of awards from Impactionable and the Social Innovations Competition. However, the company has also partnered with several state and national government agencies, corporate and non-profit organisations.
From using recycled plastic as a building material to turning waste plastic into non-toxic resin, tackling plastic waste is now the goal of a huge number of entrepreneurs as spotted by Springwise in the archive.
Spotted: With short-term renting, homeworking, and growing families: living is more dynamic now than it ever has been before. Although DIY (Do It Yourself) has been a fair solution to modern life so far, its time-consuming and inflexible nature lets it down. Noticing a gap in the market for a way to build structures at home with easy modularity and flexibility, a father and daughter decided to take matters into their own hands. And so, they founded Portugal-based Corkbrick to help to reinvent the spaces we live in.
Inspired by Lego, Corkbrick is a real-size modular system with interlocking cork blocks, or brocks, that are the company’s trademark. There are seven of these brocks, two that are foundational, four that are directional, and one that is a filler to create dynamic furniture, furnishings, and structures. These eco-friendly, sturdy, heat-resistant, and soundproof blocks can be assembled and disassembled easily, without the need for tools, screws, or glue.
For the founders, cork was a natural choice for their product. It has a minimal impact on the environment because the harvesting of cork does not require the harming or cutting down of trees. Once the bark is extracted, a new layer of cork regrows, making it a renewable resource – and each cork tree typically lives more than 250 years.
Corkbrick is a fully operational enterprise, providing solutions and products from home decor, workspace furniture, and even kid’s play.
Springwise has previously spotted other architectural innovations that resemble Lego, from stackable homes to help solve the housing crisis to building bricks made from volcanic glass that don’t need mortar or insulation.
Spotted: Less than 45 per cent of original global reefs remain, and scientists predict that by 2070, they could disappear altogether. Reefs are declining at twice the pace of rainforests and stopping the damage requires swift, focused actions at sites around the world. One company, Swiss-based Rrreefs, creates bespoke coral reef replacements that provide multiple environmental benefits. The company’s goal is to revive one per cent of coastal coral reefs by 2033.
Using pure clay, the company 3D prints reef bricks that are customised to best suit the nearest shoreline and local environment. By understanding water flows and marine topography, the company builds structures that provide microenvironments for thousands of animals and plants to thrive. Protecting shores from erosion improves the growing environments for underwater forests of mangroves and seagrass, both of which are crucial to the capture of carbon dioxide. And a single cubic metre of the reef blocks provides a new home to more than 20,000 tiny animals, 20 corals, 60 fish, and more.
The surface of the bricks is designed specifically to support a variety of coral larvae contributing to the genetic diversity of the new reef. The natural clay material contains no artificial ingredients or chemicals, making it a healthy choice that contributes no new pollution to the world’s oceans.
Using 3D printing allows for modular production and complete customisation of height, width, and length of the overall reef structure. The process also allows for local manufacturing, which further reduces the carbon footprint of each reef.
The innovations seeking to help stop the irreversible destruction of the world’s coral reefs are many and varied. Recent ones spotted by Springwise include a global cat food brand supporting new reefs and a company making leather out of an invasive fish that threatens reef health.
Copenhagen-based Natural Material Studio and designer Zuzanna Skurka have created an installation at Milan design week from soft bio textiles made from surplus bricks.
Called Brick Textiles, the project is on display at Alcova – a travelling exhibition platform for independent design that is held at a different disused site in Milan each year.
Natural Material Studio and Zuzanna Skurka created textiles from waste bricks
Natural Material Studio worked with Polish designer and researcher Zuzanna Skurka to create the textiles from highly porous repurposed bricks that were classified as waste after demolition projects.
“Rule one is, you should work with materials that are already there,” studio founder Bonnie Hvillum told Dezeen in Milan.
The project is on display at Alcova in Milan
The textiles were made from a combination of crushed bricks bonded together with Procel – a home-compostable, protein-based bioplastic of natural softener and pigments developed by Natural Material Studio.
Featuring a distinctly reddish hue, the textiles were divided into large, roughly-cut slabs that hang suspended from the roof on metal bars in a room at Alcova to form a dramatic installation illuminated by skylights.
Swirly patterns made by the crushed bricks characterise the textile
Natural Material Studio and Skurka drew upon traditional weaving techniques to create the textile, which was made by incorporating bricks and Procel into a “biomaterial matrix”, according to Hvillum.
The material owes its strength, colour and texture to the bricks, which create unique swirly patterns on each slab that are produced randomly during the “fluid casting process”, she explained.
Hvillum described the product as a “biomaterial matrix”
“We were very curious about this question of how can architecture be flexible, more simple and translucent even? added Hvillum. “It’s all the opposite aspects of a brick.”
“When we think of brick it’s like a solid, rigid, structural wall,” she continued. “But how can we make more flexible and fluid architecture today?”
Examples of the bricks the designers used are positioned underneath the textiles
Holes were pierced into the corners of the slabs so that they can be linked together.
While the water-resistant textile is already being used by interior architects as room dividers, Hvillum said that the studio hopes that one day it could form whole walls.
“The way we build and how we live in the built environment shapes us, so if we can build a more flexible and organic biomaterial, we want to start the exploration of what that experience is,” she continued.
This year, the Alcova exhibition takes place at a former slaughterhouse in Porta Vittoria. The formation of brick-based textiles hangs from metal bars where meat once hung at the site.
“There’s something funny and a little bit rough about that image,” acknowledged Hvillum.
The textiles hang where meat was once suspended in the former slaughterhouse
The materials specialist explained that Brick Textiles intends to salvage something from the past and propose fresh ways of thinking about an existing resource.
“It’s new materials we’re developing, so we still don’t know everything about them,” she reflected. “And that’s the beauty and honesty of it.”
Established in 2018, Natural Material Studio has created a number of repurposed materials for wide-ranging projects. These include crockery for a seafood restaurant made from leftover scallop shells and clothing created with algae, clay and foam.
Brick Textiles is on display at Alcova from 17 to 23 April 2023 as part of Milandesignweek.See our Milandesignweek 2023 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.
Expanded cork, construction waste and human urine feature in this roundup of brick alternatives, designed to reduce the masonry unit’s embodied carbon footprint.
After concrete and steel, brick has become the latest focus for architects, designers and material researchers hoping to slash the emissions associated with building materials.
That’s because bricks are generally made from clay – a finite resource that needs to be mined and shipped around the globe – as well as being fired in fossil fuel-powered kilns at temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, often for several days.
This energy-intensive process generates not just a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions but also carbon monoxide and other dangerous air pollutants, especially in South Asia where kilns are often still powered by coal.
To tackle these problems, brick manufacturers and researchers are increasingly looking at how to make use of local waste materials to create masonry units, as well as reverting to traditional methods of sun-drying to cut out the need for firing.
Read on for seven examples of brick alternatives, ranging from experimental student projects to the Dezeen Award-winning K-Briq, which is set to go into mass production this spring.
Cork blocks by MPH Architects, Bartlett School of Architecture, University of Bath, Amorim UK and Ty-Mawr
Interlocking blocks of expanded cork are stacked like Lego blocks without the need for mortar or glue in this construction system, which was used to build the Stirling Prize-nominated Cork House.
This means the bricks can be used to create structures that are easily disassembled, recycled and reused, as well as having the potential to be carbon negative due to the large amounts of CO2 sequestered by the cork oaks, from which the material is sourced.
London firm MPH Architects has been working on the system in collaboration with various research institutes since 2014, and is now hoping to develop it into a self-build cork construction kit.
Find out more about the cork blocks ›
Photo by Zero Waste Scotland
K-Briq by Kenoteq
At 90 per cent, the K-Briq offers “the highest recycled content of any brick” currently on the market, according to manufacturer Kenoteq, leading the brick to be crowned sustainable design of the year at the 2022 Dezeen Awards.
As the brick doesn’t need to be fired, it requires 90 per cent less energy in its production than a traditional brick and ultimately emits less than a tenth of the carbon emissions in its manufacture.
Out of the brick alternatives on this list, K-Briq is the closest to commercialisation. But its prolonged curing process has previously posed issues for quick-turnaround projects, with South African studio Counterspace forced to abandon plans to integrate K-Briqs into the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion due to long lead times.
Find out more about the K-Briq ›
Building the Local by Ellie Birkhead
This student project from Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Ellie Birkhead makes use of local waste materials such as hair from a hairdresser, horse manure from a stable and wool from a farm to reinforce unfired clay bricks.
The result is different region-specific bricks, which Birkhead argues can help to manage waste in a more circular way and “forge a future for local industry”.
Find out more about Building the Local ›
Gent Waste Brick by Carmody Groarke, TRANS Architectuur Stedenbouw, Local Works Studio and BC Materials
To form the new wing of the Design Museum Gent, architecture studios Carmody Groarke and TRANS Architectuur Stedenbouw worked with materials researchers to turn local municipal waste such as demolition concrete and glass into an unfired low-carbon brick.
This carries one-third of the embodied carbon as a typical Belgian clay brick and is produced in a simple process that is being opened up to the public through workshops, encouraging local residents to have a hand in the construction of their museum.
“The bricks will be manufactured on a brownfield site in Ghent using a clean simple production process, which could easily be replicated in other urban settings,” said Carmody Groarke. “There are no resultant emissions, by-products or waste.”
Find out more about the Gent Waste Brick ›
Green Charcoal bricks by the Indian School of Design and Innovation
These concrete bricks from the Indian School of Design and Innovation in Mumbai are enriched with soil, charcoal and loofah fibres, which create air pockets and help to reduce the amount of cement needed in their production process.
The resulting building blocks are up to 20 times more porous than common bricks, promoting biodiversity by making space for plants and insects in our cities, the researchers claim.
Find out more about Green Charcoal ›
Mycelium Brick by The Living
One of the first experiments in using mycelium at an architectural scale saw New York studio The Living construct 2014’s MoMA PS1 pavilion using bricks that were grown from the root-like structure of fungi.
Based on a process pioneered by biomaterials company Ecovative, this involved placing waste corn stalks from agriculture inside a mould and encouraging the mycelium to grow around this aggregate, effectively cementing the brick.
Mycelium is also increasingly being explored as a means of insulating and fire-proofing buildings that can help to sequester carbon while being biodegradable.
Find out more about the Mycelium Brick ›
Urine bio-bricks by Suzanne Lambert
In this experimental project from University of Cape Town researcher Suzanne Lambert, human urine, sand and bacteria are combined in brick-shaped moulds.
The bacteria triggers a chemical reaction that breaks down the urea in the urine while producing calcium carbonate – the main component of cement – in much the same process that seashells are formed.
“The longer you allow the little bacteria to make the cement, the stronger the product is going to be,” Lambert told Dezeen.
Spotted: According to the UN Environmental Programme, the construction industry accounts for around 11 per cent of total global carbon emissions. Now, Dutch startup StoneCycling is hoping to make a dent in this figure with bricks made from recycled construction debris. The company currently makes recycled bricks containing 60 per cent waste, and in the future expects to bring that figure up to 100 per cent.
Currently, most of the company’s bricks are made up of two to three waste streams, although the company works with 60 waste streams overall, including construction waste such as ceramic toilet bowls, roof tiles, and steel. The waste is sorted, ground, moulded, and fired in a kiln, just like traditional bricks. However, while traditional clay bricks are very energy intensive, the recycled waste bricks can be fired at lower temperatures, so their manufacture releases less carbon.
The type of waste used gives different colours and textures to each collection of bricks. For example, some drive-through Starbucks locations in Europe were built with StoneCycling bricks speckled with white; those are made from crushed toilet bowls. The bricks are especially useful in repairs to historic buildings, as the variation in colour and finish makes the bricks appear more historically accurate. The company also makes BioBased tiles, a tile product that is 300 per cent stronger than concrete blocks and creates 95 per cent less CO2.
StoneCycling describes its mission as creating, “A circular world where waste is synonymous with raw material. Cities and their buildings will be constructed of building materials that are made from 100 per cent waste, are 100 per cent recyclable at the end of their life cycle, and absorb more carbon than it takes to create them.” The concept was conceived at the Design Academy Eindhoven in around 2009, when then-student Tom van Soest worked on upcycling waste found in vacant buildings. After graduating, Van Soest founded StoneCycling with his friend Ward Massa, who manages business strategy.
In order to reduce carbon emissions, it is vital to improve the sustainability of the construction and materials sector. With the cement industry alone generating somewhere between four and eight per cent of all global man-made carbon emissions, the use of recycled resources is seen as vital. Springwise has seen this in a wide number of recent innovations, including carbon-negative insulation made from grass and construction materials made from plastic waste.
