Who decides what a material is worth? The moment a building falls, a system answers on its behalf — a cost, a code, a carbon figure — and everything it cannot measure is quietly written off. But worth shifts with who is looking. What if a material could pass through recycling and gain value, not lose it?

A brick has six faces. Once a building is demolished, a brick is quickly redefined by the system: it becomes surplus - a string of code, a demolition cost, or a figure of embodied carbon. These are the faces the system can see, measure, and record. But a brick has some other faces. In the hands of a craftsperson, it holds possibilities yet to be realised. In memory, it carries traces of a life once lived. And in the decision of whether a material is worth salvaging, and how it might be reused, lies a form of knowledge rooted in experience—one that resists being coded. Six Faces of a Brick is a research-based exhibition that asks: When existing recycling systems can only see part of a material’s value, can the values that resist quantification be brought back into the cycle? Drawing on BAMB and Madaster, two systems for circular materials, as well as the practices of four studios across different countries, the exhibition explores how materials might move beyond a recycling chain destined for downcycling, towards cycles of equal or even greater value. The exhibition itself is also an experiment: its display structures are built from reclaimed materials, bringing their overlooked values back into view. A brick has six faces. Value is never seen from a single point of view. — Participating Studios: Atelier Wo-Land Onebite Design RePlasTerial YES MAKE — Presented by: ili architects × SANAN Studio Curated by: Yiyun Liang, Harman Liu Hongdao, Zix Von, Chuxiao Wang Project Director, Digital Curation & Public Engagement: Hengzhen Zhang Research & Content: Yue Ji, Yunxi Wu Exhibition Design: Peitong Liu, Selina Wong Media Partner: Arts Thread With thanks to: Huiwen Shi, Yibao Zhang