Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heisel (eds.), Birkhäuser, Berlin and Basel, 2014

”Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover“ is the sustainable guideline that has replaced the ”Take, Make, Waste“ attitude of the industrial age. Based on their competence centre in this field at the ETH Zurich and the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, the authors provide both a conceptual and practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource for architectural, interior, and industrial design.

This book introduces an inventory of current projects and building elements, ranging from marketed products, among them façade panels made of straw and self-healing concrete, to advanced research and development like newspaper, wood or jeans denim used as isolating fibres. Going beyond the mere recycling aspect of reused materials, it looks into innovative concepts of how materials usually regarded as waste can be processed into new construction elements. The materials and products are shown in the context of their application in built or prototypical projects. They are organized along the manufacturing processes that lend them their specific characteristics: densified, reconfigured, transformed, designed and cultivated materials.

In the second part, a product directory presents all materials and projects in this book according to their functional uses in construction: load-bearing, self-supporting, insulating, waterproofing and finishing products.

In a number of essays, the US innovator in ecological design, Mitchell Joachim, Berlin-based urban designer, Jörg Stollmann, and Sascha Peters, the author of the bestselling Material Revolution 1 and 2, provide specific insights in planning and design for a zero waste future.

Available at: www.degruyter.com