British house turns old duvets and oyster shells into building materials

A house in Brighton was built with some unlikely materials hidden in plain sight. Inside its walls were old duvets and discarded bedding, reused as insulation rather than sent to landfill. On the outside, oyster shells collected from a local restaurant were turned into experimental tiles designed to protect that insulation from the weather. The project was developed at the Brighton Waste House by researchers from the University of Brighton with Local Works Studio, as part of a wider attempt to find uses for waste generated close to construction sites.According to researchers at the University of Brighton, the restaurant supplying the shells discarded more than 50,000 of them each year, giving the researchers a plentiful material to work with. Some shells were used directly, while others were heated at around 900°C to make quicklime before being combined with crushed shell. The mixture was moulded and left to harden, producing tiles that became part of the building's exterior.How did researchers turn discarded oyster shells into building tilesThe University of Brighton team developed the tiles as part of a project exploring how waste materials could be reused in construction. The ti...