Two buckets. That’s all that was left at the end of the day when Nexii, a concrete alternative start-up, tore down one of its first demonstration projects. A 700-square-foot showroom and model home displaying Nexii’s building technology was constructed in 2019 near Vancouver to prove the buildability of the new material, which has far lower emissions than conventional concrete. Now, with the project’s teardown, the company is proving that the material can be deconstructed and rebuilt elsewhere, with very little waste heading to a landfill in between.

“Our buildings are designed for rapid assembly,” says Zosia Brown, Nexii’s vice president of sustainability, “and they’re equally able to rapidly disassemble.”

The project is an example of circular design that Nexii, one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2022, is hoping to make more common through its sturdy panel-based construction system.

The showroom was constructed with factory-built panels made of the company’s concrete alternative, Nexiite, which produces about 35% lower carbon emissions than conventional concrete. The most common building material in the world, conventional concrete has a particularly high carbon footprint due to the emissions caused by its main binding ingredient, Portland cement, which has been estimated to account for about 8% of global emissions. In contrast Nexiite uses no Portland cement at all, relying instead on a proprietary binding agent.

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