INVITED BY DESIGN MUSEUM GENT

Ken De Cooman is co-founder of BC architects & studies, and BC materials. With these companies, BC starts from architecture, over research and expertise and experiment, towards material production and contracting. The use of local, bio-based, circular materials in open construction processes had led to innovative public and private buildings on the European and African continent. BC materials transforms Belgian excavated earths into no-carbon, healthy and circular building materials. BC was participating in the Biennale d’Architettura di Venezia 2018, in the Oslo Triennale for Architecture 2019, in the International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam 2022, and is laureate of the BeCircular and Vlaanderen Circulair grant programmes.

The act of building has an impact and is at the same time a manifestation of values and ideas, which grew out of a broad network around a specific project. Building has a transformative power, driven by action, narrative and result. About 1/3 of the total CO2 emissions come from the construction industry, and that’s exactly why BC Materials wants to make change and especially raise awareness. Festival partner Design Museum Gent invited Ken De Cooman to talk about the ambitions and projects of BC Materials. One of their recent projects is a research, with support of Vlaanderen Circulair, on a circular facing brick for DING (Design In Ghent), the new museum wing of Design Museum Gent. De Cooman will tell you all about the endless possibilities of using waste flows as building materials.