For the 26th edition of School’s Out! we had invited Jasper van der Linden and Ludovica Cassina of BC architects to talk about their work at BC Architects & Studies.

The Brussels-based office is working on changing the building industry by developing other, bio-based materials and designs. For example by transforming pure earth of construction sites to local building materials such as clay plasters, compressed earth blocks and rammed earth for walls and floors. These products are circular, carbon-neutral, healthy and possess minimal grey energy. This is not only needed to achieve our climate targets, but also puts new demands on architectural design and construction.

BC Architects (Brussels Cooperation) started as a loose cooperation between young Brussels architects and artists, which resulted in installations, re-search projects and open-source design networks. The company now has three organizational structures: BC Architects, an architectural design office in the normal sense; BC Studies, which researches how social design and architecture can contribute to the contemporary and global Zeitgeist in an independent way; and BC Materials, which uses urban mining to gather earth from building sites and transform it into circular building materials.

Earth discovery Workshop

On Saturday 28 May, we put the theory into practice during a one-day workshop with BC Architects & Studies. Together with a small group of participants, we explored the possibilities of building with loam and local clay by making our own building material.