BakerBrown Studio, an award-winning practice based in Cooksbridge, East Sussex, has spent decades asking a simple question that’s getting harder for every trade to ignore: what if “waste” is just material we have not planned for yet?
That idea is built into Waste House at the University of Brighton, a permanent building that performs to PassivHaus standards and uses about 55 tonnes of discarded materials. The team describes it as a living laboratory that helped prove unconventional materials can be integrated into real projects, as long as the design stays tied to known building functions, engineering review, and building control expectations.
For mason contractors, the most relevant thread is the studio’s focus on “urban mining,” which treats cities and existing buildings as material banks. In practice, that means getting serious about deconstruction, salvage, and reuse. On one project, the practice reused masonry from a fire-damaged house and incorporated it into the new work, and it also reused chalk excavated on site to create internal plaster finishes. The point is not novelty. It is turning what is already there into an asset that still meets regulations and warranty requirements.
Their “harvest mapping” approach also matters on masonry-heavy sites. It starts early with an audit of what is available on site and nearby, before looking farther afield. On a project connected to Glyndebourne Opera House, the studio prototyped a material using crushed oyster shells combined with lime and recycled aggregates, tying the design to local by-products.
Three practical lessons show up again and again: relationships are everything, storage space is a real constraint, and design decisions affect future reuse. The studio calls out collaboration with demolition contractors and suppliers, plus the need for warehouse-style space to sort and hold reclaimed materials. It also argues for reducing glue, using bolts rather than adhesives, and keeping assemblies simple, so buildings can come apart cleanly later. Traditional lime and clay construction, they note, can support reuse because lime mortar can be reused and clay plasters can be rehydrated and applied again.
Read the full, original article from Architecture Today here.