Winner: Sustainable design (building product) of the year. Kooo Architects has designed Tea-Earth Brick, an innovative material which brings together tea and natural earth.

This environmentally friendly and non-toxic product was specially designed for Théatre Concept Store, a tea experience store in Beijing, China.

Tea-Earth Brick carries nature to the urban setting by combining tea leaves and the soil required for its growth.

With the help of Onearthstudio for material testing and manufacturing, Tea-Earth Brick showcases a unique texture and a wide range of natural colours.

Judges comments: "The Tea-earth Bricks offer a phenomenal example of how hyper-local solutions – instead of a one-size-fits-all approach – can create painfully beautiful results. By finding a new applications for local waste materials and using them with minimal intervention, the project creates a closed-loop system while evisioning the future of sustainable aesthetics."

Studio: Kooo Architects
Project: Tea-Earth Brick by Kooo Architects
Credits: Théatre and Onearthstudio