To lower the embodied carbon used in the project’s construction and meet the client's brief for the new extension, a lime-cured, local waste brick has been developed and certified for use on the building’s façade.

The building’s façade has been designed to reference the light-toned civic buildings in Gent. The pale coloured brick and white mortar is composed of locally sourced municipal waste streams as aggregate including crushed concrete and white glass with lime as the primary binding agent. All composite materials have been carefully selected to create a white tone. The waste materials are meticulously filtered and sorted at a production centre in the centre of Gent before being pressed into their specified shape and size.

The Gent Waste Brick is cured rather than fired, gaining strength from carbonation. The hydraulic lime captures CO₂ from the atmosphere as the bricks cure, sequestering carbon over the life of the building. The design team worked in close collaboration to specify a unique material composition that is low in embodied carbon and will deliver the required strength and resilience for use in external conditions. This fabrication process, coupled with the use of recycled composites results in a brick with 0.17kg CO₂e/kg, just 1/3 the embodied carbon of a Belgian clay fired brick.

“Research is one of the core activities of a good designer and a good design museum. As a museum we need to think about the bigger questions such as climate change and to work with people to deliver solutions. We are proud to be the initiator of this research project. The Gent Waste Brick for DING has the possibility to make this world a better place. This makes us all the more excited as we will be the location where the research will result in a new and innovative brick.” 

Katrien Laporte, director Design Museum Gent