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The broken fraction

Rebuilding the city from its own discarded ground

2026 — ongoing
Rotterdam, NL
Material research

Funder: Creative Industries Fund NL (Architecture Kick-start Grant)
Partner: The Green Village, TU Delft
Links: → Creative Industries Fund NL → The Green Village

Rotterdam already knows how to recycle its own ground. Street repairs and building renovations lift a constant stream of stone, brick, tile, and concrete - material that carries the history of the city's places - which existing processes crush into anonymous aggregate and return, out of sight, below the next surface. The loop is efficient, and in closing it dissolves everything specific about what went in.

The Broken Fraction asks whether that same material can keep its identity and become a surface in its own right. Can a city generate its own ground from its own waste?

The research recomposes discarded Rotterdam fragments into cast, terrazzo-like surfaces — paving, furniture, wall - bound with low-carbon alternatives to cement and ground back so the embedded pieces stay visible. A first, preliminary step toward closing a loop that today stops beneath the pavement.