Bau.Salz building bricks by Johannes Dörfer, Jonathan Peters and Fiona Zimmer (Credit: Dörfers, Peters, Zimmer)
Architecture students at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar created an affordable building material that “shines like porcelain, has a positive impact on your health and saves maritime ecosystems.” When drinking water is produced by desalination, a highly concentrated salt brine is produced as a waste product. Until now, being dumped back into the sea, that salt brine has dramatic consequences for the environment. Bau.Salz demonstrates the potential of an unused resource: an environmentally harmful waste product is transformed into a high-quality building brick. The innovative design of the masonry blocks allows them to interlock with each other. This enables an omission of cement mortar and creates seamless, translucent bonds. The result is a brick that can carry just as much as the conventional ones- but without being burned or the use of emission-intensive materials.
Desalination
