Award-Winning Architects Keep Bricks in Use for Multiple Wins

1 July 2025

93.9K profile views
35 saves

CplusC Architects + Builders Managing Director Clinton Cole discovered The Brick Pit after labouring to salvage demolished bricks on-site for reuse and realising it cost much more than buying original, reclaimed bricks from The Brick Pit, where the heavy lifting of sorting, cleaning, blending, storing and transporting is done for architects and builders.

Visit Website

Tags

Misc.The Brick Pit

Featured Professionals

The Brick Pit

CplusC's ZZ Top House features recycled bricks from The Brick Pit, photographed here by Murray Fredericks. CplusC's Holocene House won the Single Dwelling (New) category in Architecture & Design Australia’s 2024 Sustainability Awards.

Clinton used to source bricks directly from demolition sites, but it took too much labour to sort and clean them, making them more expensive than new bricks. In 2001, Clinton found The Brick Pit in Sydney’s Smithfield, where the sorting, cleaning, and custom blending is done for architects and builders and shipped on pallets ready to be used on site.

"Bricks don't need to be bought new," Clinton says. "It's not hard to convince a reasonable client that using recycled building units is better for the environment than buying new. Why would you buy new if thousands of bricks are already sitting at The Brick Pit? Why not reuse what's already available?

"The future building blocks of our built environment are already here, and they're ready for another few centuries of life.

"There are more than enough dry pressed bricks manufactured over the last 150 years coming out of demolition projects dating from the late Victorian to Californian bungalow periods, to create new buildings for the next century," Clinton said.

“Fancy new bricks can be about 100% more expensive,” Clinton adds.

"It's worth a visit to brick recyclers like The Brick Pit before being seduced into using the far more expensive brand-new designer bricks."

The global depletion of natural resources is happening at an alarming pace, with around 100 billion tonnes of materials being extracted annually. About 93 percent of what we take from the earth is wasted. A mere 6.9 percent of resources make it back into the economy worldwide, according to the Circularity Gap Report 2025.

The Brick Pit co-owner and manager, Ohad Fleiderman, says recovering valuable resources like bricks from demolition sites can bring aesthetic, cost and environmental benefits to new builds.

“We invented a new technology to sort and clean large volumes of bricks more effectively than by hand, without damaging them. Our team also hand-sorts feature-blended bricks for architects and builders with specific colour requirements to ensure consistency throughout each pallet,” Ohad said.

A true circular economy pioneer, The Brick Pit was established in 1975 and is celebrating 50 years as one of Australia's first resellers of original reclaimed bricks.

“The Brick Pit keeps around 2 million bricks a year circulating for as long as possible and at their highest value, saving about 1,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. For each brick reused, an estimated 500 grams of CO2 emissions are saved,” Ohad says.

“We can supply upcycled bricks at scale with ample lead time for large residential and commercial projects. We have supplied bricks for many large buildings, including the multi-award-winning 6-Star Green Star Rated Sustainable Buildings Research Centre at the University of Wollongong.

“Many architects and builders visit The Brick Pit to see the wide range of colours and styles of beautiful, old bricks being sorted, cleaned and blended, ready to ship on pallets to their next building.

“Every brick tells a story, adding unique character and appeal to new builds, and saving money and carbon emissions for builders,” Ohad said.