260529 Brew Brick Clerkenwell Design Week 22

The Brew Brick®

How your morning coffee could build the cities of tomorrow

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What if the materials of tomorrow aren't mined, but brewed?

This is the provocation behind the Brew Brick®, a new material innovation born from a collaboration between Studio Egret West and York Handmade Brick. The concept was sparked during a continuing professional development (CPD) session on traditional brick manufacturing.

Looking at the sheer volume of coffee consumed within his own studio, SEW architect Harry Henderson posed a question: Could our spent coffee grounds be used to make bricks?

What began as an office experiment - collecting a week's worth of studio coffee waste, has rapidly evolved into a scalable blueprint for the circular economy. Traveling to York Handmade Brick’s factory, Henderson tested how different ratios of spent coffee and locally sourced clay could be combined. The goal wasn't just to create a novelty eco-product, but to challenge conventional manufacturing methods while maintaining the rigorous performance and aesthetic standards of a fired clay brick.

Collecting coffee around Clerkenwell in yellow bins

The yellow coffee bins arriving in York

Harry and Leo at York Handmade Brick Factory

Harry and Leo at York Handmade Brick Factory

The first Brew Brick

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Sustainability

The environmental benefits cannot be ignored. By substituting a portion of virgin clay with coffee grounds, the Brew Brick® becomes approximately 5% lighter than a traditional brick. During firing, the organic material burns away, leaving microscopic air pockets within the brick and creating a more porous, aerated structure. While this has only a minor impact on the brick’s structural properties, it delivers a brick that, over time, allows for less embodied carbon in the system. The reduced weight lowers transport related carbon emissions and decreases structural loads in brick facades, while using less clay helps conserve a finite natural resource. The increased porosity also reduces the energy required during firing, further improving the Brew Brick’s® overall environmental performance.

The abundance of spent coffee grounds within the manufacturing process also prompted new ideas for their use beyond the brick body itself. The waste material can act as a natural release agent during moulding, reducing the reliance on sand traditionally used to prevent clay from sticking to moulds. This creates an additional opportunity to reduce the consumption of virgin materials while further integrating waste into the manufacturing process.

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However, the true test of any sustainable material is its lifecycle. Too often, architectural eco-installations become waste themselves once the exhibition ends. The Brew Brick® actively subverts this trend. Following its successful proof-of-concept at Clerkenwell Design Week - where SEW constructed the BREW HOUSE pavilion using 700 bricks made from 300kg of locally collected coffee waste - the structure was not thrown away.

Brew Bricks arriving at Tipping Point East

Instead, the pavilion was carefully dismantled and its components redistributed through Tipping Point East. The bricks were adopted by ForsterInc and given a permanent second life, forming the interior bar of a 'Fuckoffee' café in Pimlico. This closed-loop journey - from local cafes, to an architectural pavilion, and back into a commercial hospitality fit-out - proves that value can be retained at every stage of a material's life. It demonstrates that building components can be designed as durable, nomadic assets easily relocated into new contexts.

05 Construction Photo of Brew Brick Bar at Fuckoffee

The Brew Bricks being installed at Fuckoffee - Opening soon!

Beyond its environmental credentials, the Brew Brick® offers a distinct aesthetic warmth, with subtle variations in colour, texture, and surface character that mass-produced materials rarely achieve.

While current applications are focused on interior and non-loadbearing installations, ongoing research aims to secure certification for external structural use. The long-term vision is one of localised industrial symbiosis: brick manufacturers establishing regional networks to collect sorted coffee waste from urban centers, transforming a daily disposal headache into a consistent, valuable production stream.

The Brew Brick® is more than just a clever material alternative; it is a provocation to the wider construction sector. It proves that with a willingness to adapt existing manufacturing processes, the everyday urban waste we thoughtlessly discard can quite literally become the foundation of a regenerative built environment.