Urban Terrazzo

Urban Terrazzo turns building rubble into a new surface material. Building waste, like concrete or bricks, is carefully selected and put back together using the traditional terrazzo method. Our goal with Urban Terrazzo is to rewrite the history of materials. That means that we (“They Feed off Buildings” – a design and architecture collective from Berlin) find and rework traces of old architecture into new surface materials. What is really important to us is a progressive approach in monument preservation, where the old is made into something new, finds its way into the world of architecture.

First the building rubble is flush-cast with a slab material. Thanks to this method, rubble can replace gravel as a concrete construction element. This gives waste material a new life. The building rubble is carefully evaluated in terms of its specific color, structure and visual quality. This is the basis for a new and unique piece of Urban Terrazzo. It is easy to say ‚sustainability‘ but it is not easy to put it into practice: especially when it comes to large amounts as required in the construction industry. Here, every tiny innovation is worth its weight in gold. And as designers, and also as women, in the construction industry, it is not very easy. Meaning that we are trying to set new standards and look at our architectural inheritance in a different way. If you just look at Berlin, every year about 5 million tons of construction waste is created, most of it still ends up in our landfills and does not get reused. This is where we want to come in and can make a difference.

As a material Urban Terrazzo actively contributes to establish a recycling economy. It helps increase the acceptability of recycled building materials. The refined and sustainable design material may spark new inspiration in the building materials industry. We really think that sustainability has to be rethought in a new and different way. Sustainability is on our minds but is still associated with a specific type of aesthetics and we want to break from that. Meaning as an architetural collective we produce new pictorial worlds that may seem surprising in terms of sustainable design. Some of them are dark or experimental and that is exactly what we need. Modern and progressive design can also be sustainable.

The project has already been implemented in Berlin, Prague and Verona.

Urban Terrazzo was winner of the German Ecodesign Award 2018 in the category “Young Talent”. At that time, the designers Rasa Weber and Luisa Rubisch were interviewed.

Three questions for the designers

Can you remember the moment when you first had the idea for Urban Terrazzo? How did the idea become a product?

The idea for the upcycling product Urban Terrazzo evolved from design-based research into resource sustainability. Around 5 million tonnes of construction waste are generated every year in Berlin alone. Most of this continues to end up in our landfills. As designers, it is important to us to help bring seemingly useless old building materials back to life. To date, the motto of the standardised industry has been to make recycled products look just like new. For customers, it’s practically impossible to pick out the sustainable products. We are making a difference in this regard with Urban Terrazzo. Every piece of Urban Terrazzo is as unique as its beginnings.

What was your personal highlight in the development process for Urban Terrazzo?

From the outset, the process of developing Urban Terrazzo has been an exciting journey into a new discipline. As designers, we are newcomers to the construction industry. At first, being taken seriously was not always an easy task. It was therefore an important learning step for us to use the expertise of qualified specialists to help us move from the first prototypes to a market-ready product. In the meantime, we work closely together with technology companies, manufacturers and other creatives to make Urban Terrazzo an industrial reality. With a growing network and increasing experience, we have developed our own production and sales model. Today, we are talking to architects and designers alike about our vision, as well as with recycling centres and concrete manufacturers. Behind Urban Terrazzo is genuine teamwork.

Where do you see yourself and your project in the next five years?

We are currently manufacturing Urban Terrazzo in two different ways. On the one hand, Urban Terrazzo Standard is produced in cooperation with our German and Italian manufacturers as an upcycled product made from local building rubble. This enables us to work on both smaller and larger scales – from countertops to floor tiles. In order to make building material recycling more widely accessible in the future, we hope that this model will also be of interest for public developers. We also offer Urban Terrazzo Custom-Made, which is our product for the aficionados. We consider it important to appreciate the traces of the old architecture and to think of a building as truly recyclable. For example, the demolished wall from an old forester’s lodge that becomes a new terrazzo washbasin. We want to help restore new life to these traces of the old architecture. This can also be of great interest for larger construction projects with historical architectural relevance. As such, Urban Terrazzo is a form of progressive monument conservation.

Good Cases