A Brick for Venice

Showcasing a novel waste-based construction product made from the excess mud from Venice’s canals. In 2023, brick is still a primary construction material, with around 1.5 trillion bricks produced globally every year, burning 375 million tonnes of coal. Around 87% of this production is clustered within Asia, which adds an extensive carbon footprint to the bricks as they are transported to the other continents. A BRICK FOR VENICE re-thinks these outmoded manufacturing methods through the upcycling of local waste materials, in conjunction with a profoundly local production strategy, to drastically reduce the notional brick’s embodied emissions. The pavilion offers a clear proof of concept that, when scaled up, strengthens the operational sustainability of Venice’s day-to-day maintenance, providing a closed-loop, circular-economy framework that’s undeniably critical if we are to attain a carbon-neutral future. A BRICK FOR VENICE re-interprets the iconic forms of the beautiful Venetian chimneys while exploring the potential of using dredged waste sediment from the Venetian canals and other waste by-products from the surrounding industrial areas, to create a low-carbon brick from and for Venice. This is of particular importance in a time of climate emergency and provides a vision for forming closed-loop systems in our built environment.