A new design museum in Ghent, Belgium has opened as a structure built almost entirely from recycled construction waste, including old sinks, car windscreens, toilets and condemned concrete frames sourced from across the city.
The €20m (£17m) building, designed by London-based architects Carmody Groarke working with local firms Atama and Re-st, contains 82,000 bricks derived from construction waste. The bricks were produced during a two-day brick-making festival, according to the designers.
The museum's angular white exterior rises above Ghent's medieval rooftops. Andy Groarke, co-founder of Carmody Groarke, said the design draws inspiration from gothic cathedrals that incorporated unconventional materials. "There's nothing new about reuse," Groarke stated. "We've just forgotten how to do it."
The project represents an approach to museum design that embeds sustainability directly into the building's structure rather than treating it as an afterthought. By sourcing materials from the city's own waste streams, the architects created a working example of circular economy principles at scale.
The building's capacity to absorb CO2 comes from the materials used in its construction, though the source material does not specify the exact mechanism or measurement of this absorption.