The CO2-absorbing building made of old sinks, windscreens and toilets: Ghent’s £17m design museum is a green marvel — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Carmody Groarke designed Ghent's new €20m (£17m) design museum with local firms Atama and Re-st, using 82,000 specially certified bricks each made of 63% construction waste sourced within 8km of the site
- The bricks save two-thirds of the embodied carbon of regular fired clay bricks, with the hydrated lime continuing to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere as the bricks cure over coming months and years
- The building incorporates salvated materials from across Ghent — condemned concrete frames, windows, car windscreens, sinks and old toilets — while toilet cubicle tiles feature seaweed, flax, wood terrazzo, and volcanic ash
- A citizens' panel of 40 randomly drawn Ghent residents produced 100+ recommendations shaping the museum, from preserving unticketed areas to ensuring the 'chic' building wouldn't put people off
- The structure is described as Belgium's biggest public mass-timber building, using Austrian spruce CLT for walls and floors with chunky beech LVL beams, topped by a freely accessible public loft
- The new tower unites previously fragmented museum wings — an 18th-century rococo mansion and a troublesome 1990s addition — into a continuous accessible loop for the first time, with 60% of columns removed from the 1990s wing
- The design drew criticism for its boxy white mass clashing with Ghent's medieval skyline, though the museum defended the height as offering never-before-seen city views
Why it matters: The €20m project proves construction-waste bricks can be certified and deployed at scale (82,000 units, 63% recycled content, sourced within 8km), while tying material circularity to a 40-person citizens' panel — a public-procurement approach architect Andy Groarke explicitly contrasted with the UK's contractor-dominated model that he said 'sabotages' quality.
Ask SkimNews
