A New Brick Building in Manhattan is Made of 577,367 pounds of Recycled Waste

Brief 

The brick facade of The West, a new condo building with 219 residences, is made up of almost 580,000 pounds of demolition and industrial waste. Created by Dutch company StoneCycling, the recycled bricks contain 60% waste, including ceramic toilet bowls, roof tiles, and steel. Most bricks are made up of two to three waste streams, although the company works with 60 waste streams overall.

Insight

Let’s play Spot The Difference, urban edition. You’re on West 47th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, a Manhattan neighborhood known for its industrial vibe. Like much of the area, the street is lined with brick buildings; despite some color vacations, the facades mostly look the same. There is, however, one striking difference.

A new grey-brick building with a gritty, almost worn-out facade now sits at the corner of 47th Street and Eleventh Avenue. If it weren’t for the top half made of glass, the building would look like it’s been sitting here for decades. That’s because the bricks aren’t new, at least not exactly.

The brick facade of The West, a new condo building with 219 residences, is made up of almost 580,000 pounds of demolition and industrial waste. Created by Dutch company StoneCycling, the recycled bricks contain 60% waste, including ceramic toilet bowls, roof tiles, and steel. Most bricks are made up of two to three waste streams, although the company works with 60 waste streams overall.

The West was designed by Concrete, the Dutch architecture firm behind Citizen M hotels in New York, London, and Amsterdam. This is their first time working with StoneCycling’s “WasteBasedBricks”—and the first time the bricks have been used in the U.S.—but the architects are drawing on a strong legacy of Dutch brick building. “The canal houses in Amsterdam are all built by brick,” says Erikjan Vermeulen, a founding partner at Concrete. “We have a big brick tradition and history.”