Nexii Demonstrates Reusable Construction System

Brief 

Nexii built a showroom and model home near Vancouver, British Columbia, three years ago to demonstrate its alternative to concrete for building, and now that demonstration has been torn down and 99.8% of its material will be reused. Only two buckets of waste were left from the dismantling of Nexii’s panel-based construction system, which also entails far fewer carbon emissions than concrete.

Insight

Two buckets. That’s all that was left at the end of the day when Nexii, a concrete alternative start-up, tore down one of its first demonstration projects.

A 700-square-foot showroom and model home displaying Nexii’s building technology was constructed in 2019 near Vancouver to prove the buildability of the new material, which has far lower emissions than conventional concrete

. Now, with the project’s teardown, the company is proving that the material can be deconstructed and rebuilt elsewhere, with very little waste heading to a landfill in between.“Our buildings are designed for rapid assembly,” says Zosia Brown, Nexii’s vice president of sustainability, “and they’re equally able to rapidly disassemble.”

The project is an example of circular design that Nexii, one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2022, is hoping to make more common through its sturdy panel-based construction system.

The showroom was constructed with factory-built panels made of the company’s concrete alternative, Nexiite, which produces about 35% lower carbon emissions than conventional concrete. The most common building material in the world, conventional concrete has a particularly high carbon footprint due to the emissions caused by its main binding ingredient,

Portland cement, which has been estimated to account for about 8% of global emissions. In contrast Nexiite uses no Portland cement at all, relying instead on a proprietary binding agent.Assembly requires little more than craning the pieces onto a foundation and bolting them together. In 2021, the company’s materials were used to construct a Popeye’s fast food restaurant in just two weeks.

They’ve also built projects for Starbucks and are currently working on a project for Marriott hotels. They’re also partnering with companies like Siemens and Honeywell to provide the building materials for net zero industrial facilities.