Together with Werner Sobek (architect), Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel, FRONT® (formerly StoneCycling) developed a brick specially designed for dry stacking and disassembly as part of the UMAR project.
The Urban Mining and Recycling (UMAR) Experimental Unit is one of the units at the NEST research building on the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) campus in Dübendorf, Switzerland.
The building design demonstrates how a responsible approach to dealing with our natural resources can go hand in hand with appealing architectural forms. The project is underpinned by the proposition that all the resources required to construct a building must be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable.
For this project, we developed a one-of-a-kind variation on the WasteBasedBrick using the Mushroom as the basis. We changed the recipe slightly to make the bricks fit better with the interior.
The idea was to create different colours and textures using one single brick. To do this, we worked with several finishes, such as Punched, Sliced, and Raw – and even polished a few!
Urban Mining is, in short, the process of reclaiming compounds and elements from products, buildings and waste.
Life cycle thinking is placed at the forefront of the design: Instead of merely using and subsequently disposing of resources, they are borrowed from their technical and biological cycles for a certain amount of time before being put back into circulation once again.
Such an approach makes reusing and repurposing materials equally important to recycling and upcycling (both at a systemic and molecular/biological level, e.g. via melting or composting).
This conceptual emphasis means that UMAR functions simultaneously as a material laboratory and temporary material storage.
A responsible approach to dealing with our natural resources can go hand in hand with appealing architectural form.
We are proud to be part of a team of highly professional people and institutes that are making great efforts to stimulate innovative building.
This was a one-off product made specifically for this project. With our Custom Made Service, it's possible to develop your own bespoke brick or brick slip.
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