Reinventing Masonry with Excavated Earth

Apex, Tribeca is a six-storey commercial and laboratory hub at the centre of London’s Tribeca development, designed by Bennetts Associates for Reef Group to support biotech and emerging science uses. The project’s architecture adopts robust warehouse-like gestures with deep punched fenestration and a curving brick façade to align with the canal edge and surrounding context while providing flexible interior environments for research, offices, and community uses. A pioneering element of the building’s environmental strategy is the use of unfired earth blocks in the basement walls, manufactured off-site from the project’s excavated clay subsoil mixed with sand and straw, then dried rather than fired. This approach eliminates the high carbon emissions associated with firing clay or cement-based blockwork and integrates site material back into the building fabric, reducing waste and embodied carbon relative to conventional methods. Collaboration with HG Matthews enabled testing and specification of block mixes tailored to performance criteria, and the blocks function as a low-carbon liner over the concrete basement structure. The method exemplifies an innovative circular material approach for large-scale urban construction.