Waste-Based Brick and Timber Shape New Wing of Design Museum Gent

Design Museum Gent in Belgium reopened on 3 October 2026 after a four-year renovation and expansion. Its new five-storey wing, designed by Carmody Groarke with Belgian practice ATAMA, has a façade of Gent Waste Brick, a lime-cured brick made largely from local municipal waste.

Completing a Fragmented Museum Complex

The new wing occupies the last vacant plot of the museum site in the historic centre of Ghent. It adds 2,200 m² to a group of buildings dating from the 16th to the 20th century, bringing the museum to 8,600 m² in total. RE-ST architects restored the existing buildings, including Hotel De Coninck, while the main entrance has moved to Drabstraat.

London-based Carmody Groarke and ATAMA, then called TRANS architectuur | stedenbouw, won the international competition for the project in 2019. The new wing contains a reception and shop, a lecture space, workshops, a space for temporary exhibitions and an event space on the fourth floor.

A Brick Made From City Waste

The façade is built with Gent Waste Brick, which the architects developed with BC Materials and Local Works Studio in an earlier research project. According to the museum, 63 per cent of the brick’s raw materials come from local waste streams. The architects name crushed concrete, waste glass from windows and car windscreens, and porcelain among the ingredients.

Instead of being fired in a kiln, the bricks harden through a low-energy lime-curing process. More than 82,000 of them were produced locally at Het Arsenaal in Ghent. Their dimensions match those of Hotel De Coninck, and their light tone relates to the houses along Drabstraat. The architects combined the brick with timber in the new wing.

Inside the Galleries

The exhibition design by Nord and Laura Muyldermans combines clay-plastered walls with Skellet, a circular steel construction system. Special design projects include Freeze Frame 82.2, a 3D printed aluminium gate by Unfold, and an acoustic curtain by Chevalier-Masson. The opening exhibition, Public Matter(s), looks at the relationship between design and democracy.

For architects, the project shows how a waste-based brick that started as a research prototype can be produced at building scale and used across an entire façade in a historic city centre.

Sources: Design Museum Gent / Carmody Groarke / ArchDaily / designboom
Images: Filip Dujardin and Michiel De Cleene for Design Museum Gent