BENTU Design 3D Prints Street Furniture From Demolished Urban Village Waste

Chinese design studio BENTU Design has developed an innovative method for turning construction rubble from demolished urban villages into 3D printed public furniture. The resulting material contains up to 85% recycled solid waste.

From Rubble to Furniture

The project, called Inorganic Growth, has produced two pieces so far: a chair called PU and a stool called YOU. Both are fabricated from crushed concrete, brick rubble, and mortar—the kind of debris typically discarded during urban demolition projects.

Technical Process

The material preparation process is technically demanding. Demolition debris gets processed through a jaw crusher for primary crushing, then through an impact crusher for secondary shaping. Multi-layer vibrating screening separates aggregates by particle size.

The fine powder fraction undergoes mechanical and chemical activation before being combined with industrial by-products including fly ash, slag powder, and silica fume to create a cementitious binder. To address the high water absorption that typically plagues recycled aggregates, BENTU applied nano-suspension surface modification, cutting water absorption from 8-10% down to 3-5%.

Impressive Results

The finished furniture achieves:

• 106.25 MPa compressive strength
• 12.28 MPa flexural strength
• 1.73% untreated water absorption (0.34% after waterproofing)
• PU Chair: 715 x 580 x 720 mm, 110 kg
• YOU Stool: 580 x 430 x 540 mm, 70 kg

Mobile Processing

Perhaps the most operationally interesting aspect is the mobile processing unit. By installing crushing, sorting, and printing equipment directly at demolition sites, BENTU has achieved a material utilization rate of 92%. Intelligent slicing algorithms cut material consumption by an average of 40%.

Unique Aesthetics

The color palette is derived directly from the demolition sites themselves. Using image-processing algorithms, BENTU extracted representative color values from the rubble: iron-red tones from brick, cement-gray from concrete, and muted greens from weathered surfaces.