From Waste to Resource Conference – Circularity in Practice: Design

Guest Speaker: Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad

Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad’s design projects range from the public realm to spaces, games, and objects. Drawing on aesthetics, linguistics, and anthropology, he develops projects, methodologies, and tools that actively engage publics in design processes. Visit Bahbak’s website.

Guest Speaker: Rafael El Baz

Rafael El Baz is an artist and designer based in London. His work explores the cultural and material histories embedded in everyday objects, often blending digital fabrication with traditional techniques. Visit Rafael’s website.

Sweet Terrain

Bahbak and Rafael will present their project, Sweet Terrain, which repurposes wild London clay excavated during HS2 railway construction in West London into a system of wall tiles for the proposed Old Oak Common Station. The project reimagines this overlooked material as a new architectural language rooted in the area’s cultural and industrial heritage.

Bahbak and Rafael collaborated with local Middle Eastern bakers—drawing on their tools, aesthetics, and craftsmanship traditionally used in making maamoul cookies. Carved wooden moulds, typically used to shape pastry, were instead pressed into clay to imprint intricate patterns onto the tiles.

To bring the tiles into public use, the team partnered with Craven Dunnill Jackfield—the UK’s last remaining Victorian ceramic tile manufacturer, known for producing many of the London Underground’s historic tiles.

The result is a system of hyper-local tiles that connect people, place, and process—supporting sustainable practice and British industry, while giving new form to the materials and stories embedded in West London’s evolving landscape.

Next in the conference schedule: Circularity in Practice: Architecture Panel, Rowland Keable, Emaad Damda, Ben Bosence, Chaired by Joe Jack Williams

Start from the beginning: Welcome, Clare Wood

Support

From Waste to Resource: Circular Economies for Construction Spoil Clay is part of a 19-month research initiative led by British Ceramics Biennial and undertaken by BCB Clay Researcher Claire Baily. The research was delivered in partnership with Louise Trodden (HS2 Arts & Culture Team).

Thank you to all the speakers, contributors, volunteers and attendees who generously supported and shared their knowledge, expertise and insights. The conference was recorded and edited by Copperbeach.