Ghent's design museum reopened a wing built from unfired waste bricks

Design Museum Gent has reopened a new wing whose walls are made of about 82,000 unfired bricks. The Guardian reported the building on October 20, 2026. The museum's own reopening date was October 3, after four years closed. The wing cost about €20 million, or £17 million, and was designed by Carmody Groarke with Atama and Re-st.

Each brick is about 63 percent construction waste gathered within 8 kilometres: crushed concrete, glass, sinks, toilets, and windscreens, pressed with hydrated lime. Because the bricks are not fired, they carry about a third of the embodied carbon of a fired clay brick, and the lime keeps absorbing carbon dioxide. They were made at a former railway depot. A two-day public festival invited people to make bricks, and the shop sold one for €10. A citizens' panel of 40 residents produced more than 100 recommendations.

Architects Andy Groarke and Sian Ricketts called the wall a proof of concept, not a cure for the climate crisis. The architects also describe the wing as Belgium's largest mass-timber public building, using spruce cross-laminated timber and beech laminated veneer lumber from Austria.