Grey matter questions the use of material as part of a strategy. Using the material crisis as a starting point, as well as the aim for « Métropole Zéro Déchet » (“Zero Waste Metropolis”), the architects at the Encore Heureux agency explore the idea of reusing materials at a crucial time when architecture aims at reinventing itself amongst environmental and economical constraints and new uses.

 

14 trials, 13 interviews and 75 projects show the potential of reuse and the possibility of a new life for old materials retrieved in all of the building lots. In Brussels, yesterday's bricks build today's houses. In Massachusetts, the porticos of a motorway viaduct are now part of a villa. In Saint-Denis, a mall's unused cladding is now the outside walls of the prestigious “Académie nationale contemporaine des arts du cirque”. In Madrid, old tiles are now the roofing of an avant-garde cultural center. In Bali, hundreds of clerestory windows decorate a hotel. In Alabama, 72 000 pieces of carpet are one of the main materials used to build “La maison de Lucy”. Even the façade of the future headquarters of the counsel of Europe in Brussels is adorned with 3000 recycled windows. Reuse opens a whole new spectrum of possibilities: prefabricated concrete, maritime piers, railroad sleepers, cable reels, slabs of plaster are all everyday materials considered as waste that now become foundations, facings, acoustic isolators, structures, façades, etc...

Grey matter presents the act of building as a current issue capable of making architecture evolve, placing it in the center of the material cycle and calls out to all trades in the building industry: engineers, technical inspectors, manufacturers, insurers, constructions enterprises, public and private contracting authority.

And what if building started out with the reuse of existing materials by finding them a second life?
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