International students join UB workshop to turn ‘trash to table’

Fourteen undergraduate architecture students from Mexico spent a week at UB in October testing new ways to turn demolition waste into innovative design.

The School of Architecture and Planning’s Fabrication Workshop was the hub for the school’s second annual short-term study abroad program with Tecnológico de Monterrey (TEC). The program was co-led by Christopher Romano, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, and TEC Professor Diego Rodríguez — in partnership with 2025-26 Banham Fellow Celia Chaussabel.

The week kicked off with a tour of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, followed by an introduction to the Fabrication Workshop — and safety procedures — by Stephanie Cramer, director of the Fabrication Workshop and clinical assistant professor of architecture.

Chaussabel then provided an overview of her workshop, “Trash to Table: Digital Fabrication Methods for Designing with Demolition Waste,” where the objective would be to work creatively within the constraints of digital fabrication tools (CNC routing and water jet cutting) to test new possibilities for reusing building materials.

Students were divided into four groups that were each assigned an object and a digital fabrication machine and method. Chaussabel challenged the students with several questions: Why do we reuse materials? How are architects currently engaging in the circular economy? What role do narratives and aesthetics play in reuse? How are digital fabrication and visualization currently being used in the circular economy (3D scanning, AR, VR) and what are its other potentials?

Throughout the week, students worked to turn these “trash” objects into tables. “Hearing the students’ perspectives about what they wanted to design — really getting their design interests or their views on what these objects should become — was the best part of this experience,” says Chaussabel. “We started with things like a sink or a bathtub, and to some people it brought about a childhood reaction. It was fun getting to know the student’s personalities through how they interpreted the objects,” she says, adding that this will tie into the work she’s doing for her final Banham fellowship project.

The first group cut a large slice out of a cast iron and enamel tub to make their table, the second group used the waterjet to cut a marble piece into smaller parts with slots, group three milled into the top of their found wood form and group four turned halves of a sink into a table.

In addition to the discarded objects, more standard building materials, such as 2-by-4 lumber, scrap sheet metal, 1.5-inch steel angle, all-thread, scrap EPS foam, ¾-inch plywood, and more were available to the students.

Architecture Dean Julia Czerniak stopped in mid-week for a design consultation.

“Our school doesn't really have all of the machines and tools that UB has, so it’s been really cool to see what kind of level the models of architecture can get,” said visiting student Mariana Gastelum Diaz. “We didn't know what our piece of ‘trash’ was before, but we think it was some sort of theater prop. It was spray-painted silver, so we were thinking it was a part of a stage set, but we made it into a table. We were the only team working with wood; everyone else was working with the water jet.”

When asked what she’ll take back home after this experience, Diaz said: “Celia is really good with design, especially with furniture, which I haven’t really done before. To see a different point of view of design, along with the experience the teachers here gave us, that’s the main thing that I’m going to be taking with me.”  

As the architectural discipline grapples with its role in resource depletion, carbon emissions and waste generation, there’s a growing urgency to stop sourcing new materials and reuse materials from existing buildings instead. One challenge to integrating reused materials into current building practices is technical: The process of inventorying, de-constructing and re-processing reused materials for a second life is currently less efficient than their new counterparts.

Another challenge is cultural perceptions around waste. Building materials are automatically considered waste after a single use, to be downcycled or disposed of in a landfill. Apart from materials that have historical significance or are expensive to source new, typically there is little value seen in saving building materials.

Chaussabel’s workshop challenged students to consider another type of value — the ability for reused materials to produce narratives. “When an object is dislodged from one place and ‘mis-used’ in another context, the ‘mis-use’ makes visible that the object used to belong somewhere else,” Chaussabel said.

“By retaining some of the physical characteristics from their past life, these objects can remind us that their current location is temporary and that they are on a trajectory. Instead of seeing discarded materials as waste, we might start to see them as temporarily lost objects with the potential to pick up new lives and take more care in how we use, re-circulate and dispose of all objects,” she said.

“Digital fabrication is one way that architects can make the process of reuse more efficient. It’s also a way to test the aesthetic limits of what reused objects can become, beyond ordinary reuse transformations. We engaged in both of these questions during this workshop.”

Julia Hunt, director of digital fabrication and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, called the week “a really exciting test for our machines, and myself, because the students were working with really weird objects. The exploratory aspect of working with these physical things, and the fact that the students got engaged really quickly, has led to some cool projects. This is the second year we’ve hosted students from TEC and it’s always a very fun group.”

Outside of the workshop, students took part in various cultural experiences throughout the week, including walking tours of the Parkside neighborhood, downtown Buffalo and downtown Rochester. They visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House and Torn Space Theater, explored the Allentown neighborhood and Silo City, and had a tour of First Unitarian Church of Rochester led by architect Louis I. Kahn.

The four-day workshop was co-led by Romano and Chaussabel, with assistance from Hunt, who contributed significantly to the project’s execution. Additional partners were architecture faculty members Steph Cramer, Greg Serweta, Greg Delaney, Elaine Chow, Miguel Guitart, Jin Young Song, Erkin Özay, Julia Czerniak, Mauro Cringoli and Lukas Fetzko, as well as historian Bill Fugate and Paul Lang, managing principal of CarminaWood Design.