SOCIAL MEDIA ZEITGEIST

After four years of renovation and expansion, Design Museum Gent reopened on 3 October with a new wing connecting a collection of historic buildings in the centre of the Belgian city.

Designed by Carmody Groarke and ATAMA, with RE-ST responsible for the restoration of the existing buildings, the project adds exhibition, workshop, event and gathering spaces while reconnecting parts of the museum dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

But one of its most transferable ideas sits on the outside.

The new façade is clad in more than 82,000 Gent Waste Bricks, produced locally from waste streams generated in Ghent. Rather than firing conventional clay bricks at high temperatures, the units are hardened using a lower-energy lime-curing process.

The material contains 63% recycled waste, including material sourced from the city’s construction waste streams. It was developed specifically for the museum through collaboration between the design team, Design Museum Gent, city development agency sogent, BC Materials and Local Works Studio.

Instead of selecting a lower-carbon product from an existing catalogue, the project used the museum commission to create a new building material from the city’s own waste.

Design Museum Gent under renovation, via atama.website

Getting there required more than producing a prototype. The brick went through material development, testing against European standards and consultation with Belgium’s construction certification body so that it could be approved for permanent use on the façade.

That process is what makes the project particularly relevant to architectural practice.

Material experimentation is common in installations, exhibitions and temporary structures, where regulatory and durability requirements can be relatively limited. Design Museum Gent demonstrates a longer route: using a public building commission to move an experimental circular material through testing, certification, local production and finally into permanent construction.

The architecture itself follows a similar logic of working with what already exists. The new wing occupies a previously unused part of the site and connects the museum’s fragmented historic buildings, completing a continuous visitor route rather than replacing the existing complex. Its timber structure also contributes to the project’s lower-carbon approach.

The additional spaces are intended to extend the museum beyond conventional exhibition galleries. A publicly accessible city room, workshop areas, lecture and event spaces and a courtyard create places for meeting and making as well as viewing the collection.

Ghent shows how circular construction can begin with a local question: what materials does the city already have, and what would it take to build with them?

Design Museum Gent under renovation, via atama.website

For architects, that question changes the conventional relationship between specification and design. Instead of choosing materials after the architecture has largely been defined, material sourcing becomes part of the project’s research, partnerships and supply chain.

It also suggests a role for public clients. The Gent Waste Brick was supported by Circular Flanders and sogent on behalf of the City of Ghent, allowing a civic project to become a testing ground for a material that required development and certification before it could reach the building site.

The result is relatively modest in scale, but potentially more significant as a model. If cities begin treating their own waste streams as potential construction resources, architects may increasingly find themselves working not only with manufacturers and contractors, but with recyclers, material researchers, municipal agencies and local production networks.

Design Museum Gent therefore offers more than a new museum façade. It demonstrates how a single architectural commission can help move a circular material from research into everyday construction.

Further Information

Design Museum Gent – The new wing and Gent Waste Brick

BC Materials – Gent Waste Brick

ArchDaily – Design Museum Gent reopens with new wing by Carmody Groarke and ATAMA