Astrid Holstad Stephani
For me, that focus became the issue of concrete waste in construction; one of the heaviest contributors to carbon emissions, and a wasted opportunity to save further emissions once demolished. In this article, I introduce the work that followed my engagement with three demolition sites in and around Gothenburg. Through this process, I both collaborated with and challenged the industry I was soon to join, applying design knowledge and methods from the perspective of an interior architect.
Working hands-on with such a demanding material was not the easiest path to take, but it proved to be one that was deeply meaningful. Revealing how design can open conversations about responsibility, collaboration, and care in the built environment.
Concrete as a material is heavy, cold, and often associated with permanence and scale. It shapes the environments we inhabit every day, but we struggle to see its use once buildings are deemed for demolition. My motivation was to question this material's linear lifecycle, and to explore what happens when an interior architect engages with it not as waste, but as potential.
The process began with fieldwork at three different demolition sites in and around Gothenburg. By observing, collecting, and documenting fragments of concrete, I came closer to the realities of demolition: the logistics, the dust, and the human routines that define how materials are discarded. Through this process, I built relationships with contractors, waste handlers, and architects, a network of people who each, in their own way, determine the fate of the material. Collaboration became as important as making.
Back in the studio, I experimented with ways of reassembling and reshaping the collected concrete, guided by principles of design for disassembly. The goal was to translate large-scale building components into smaller, more tangible forms. The result was five side tables, each made from concrete from the different demolition sites. They carry the marks of their previous lives, visible reminders of the buildings they once held place in.
While they are functional as furniture, the tables are also meant to serve as conversation starters. Placed in settings for focused conversation about the building industry, they invite dialogue about responsibility, material value, and the role of design in transforming linear systems into circular ones.
Ultimately, the project became less about objects and more about relationships, between people, materials, and the environments we share. Working with concrete in this way taught me that care and curiosity can be powerful tools for change, even when dealing with something so rigid as concrete.
Engaging with this project as an interior architect helped me understand what design could be. Not always just about form and function, but about care, for materials, processes and the systems that shape our built environment. It became a way of practicing responsibility through design.
In the end, the work is not about the five tables, but about what they represent: a dialogue between permanence and change, between industry and design, between waste and value.
If design can nurture these conversations, maybe it could help reimagining the relationship to the materials we depend on as well.