Hydro publicizes recycled content at architecture event

Norwegian metals producer Norsk Hydro says it is “putting urban mining in the spotlight” through its support of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy.

At the exhibition, Hydro is displaying two collaborative projects made with 100 percent recycled-content postconsumer aluminum, marketed under the brand Hydro Circal 100R. The firm says one of the two displays is “the core structure throughout the venue.”

“Raising awareness of low-emission, recycled aluminum among architects is key to lowering the [construction] industry’s total emissions,” says Asle Forsbak, director of marketing and communications of the Hydro Extrusions business unit.

“It is essential for us to be a key consideration for architects from the outset, as sustainability starts at the drawing board. Being a supporter and presenting our recycled aluminum breakthroughs at the Biennale Architettura 2025 in collaboration with such visionary architects feels like a perfect fit.”

Norsk says the building industry end market accounts for approximately one-third of its revenue, and that the company has a long history of collaborating with architects.

In one of the two displays, a Berlin-based architecture studio called Sub has used Hydro Circal 100R aluminum profiles extruded by Hydro as the structural framework for hundreds of exhibition projects “exploring the convergence of natural, artificial and collective intelligence in architecture and the built environment,” according to Hydro.

“I knew that I wanted to use 100 percent recycled aluminum for this project and found the ideal partner in Hydro,” says architect Niklas Bildstein Zaar, co-founder of Sub. “To me, the Biennale Architettura 2025 is a window into the future, an exploration of where we should be heading and of what is possible. Hydro’s recycled aluminum represents exactly that.”

After the exhibition concludes, the aluminum profiles, which were once light posts and greenhouse structures, will return to Hydro’s melt shop in Feltre, Italy, to be recycled once again and made into new aluminum products.

A Milan-based collective of architects, designers and researchers known as Park, together with Accurat and Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the Wicona by Hydro brand, have prepared another installation called Resourceful Intelligence, which Hydro describes as “investigating strategies to minimize material consumption by repurposing and enhancing the value of existing resources within the urban environment.”

“The building sector is a major consumer of raw materials, significantly affecting ecological, economic and social equilibrium,” says Filippo Pagliani, a founding partner of Park. “Architects must shift the paradigm, transforming waste into a resource and embedding it within both the design process and its outcomes.”

Hydro, citing the United Nations Environment Program as its source, says the construction sector is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 37 percent of global GHG emissions.

Providing some help, recycled-content Hydro Circal 100R offers what Hydro calls a record low 0.5 kilograms of CO_2-equivalent emissions per kilogram of aluminum produced.