Betonwaves: A new future built from the ruins of the past

What if the concrete of yesterday could help build a more sustainable tomorrow? With Betonwaves (after Egon Wrobel), artist and designer Rodney LaTourelle answers that question not just with vision, but with material action. 

Rodney LaTourelle is a Canadian artist, designer, and educator based in Berlin, whose interdisciplinary practice bridges architecture, installation, and environmental design. With a Master of Landscape Architecture and a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Manitoba, LaTourelle explores sustainable materials, circular processes, and immersive spatial experiences. In collaboration with Danish designer Louise Witthöft under the name Witthöft & LaTourelle, he transforms infrastructural materials into vibrant, participatory artworks that engage both ecology and community.

As a researcher at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (C.A.S.T.), LaTourelle also leads hands-on workshops on geopolymer cement, a climate-friendly alternative to Portland cement; promoting public awareness and experimentation with recycled aggregates and pigment-infused castings. 

In 2022, during a residency with Mitkunstzentrale at the Haus der Statistik in Berlin, LaTourelle began developing Betonwaves, a project that fuses ecological innovation with historical reflection. 

Betonwaves (after Egon Wrobel) is a sculptural series of spatial modules created using recycled concrete aggregate salvaged from the ongoing renovation of the Haus der Statistik, a monumental DDR-era building constructed between 1968 and 1970. Bound with geopolymer cement made from industrial byproducts (fly ash and blast slag) the works embody a low-carbon approach to construction, emitting up to 90% less CO₂ than traditional Portland cement. 

Formally, Betonwaves reimagines decorative concrete modules based on designs by East German artist Egon Wrobel. These forms were once ubiquitous throughout Berlin's socialist modernist architecture, particularly along Karl-Marx Allee. By reviving and reinterpreting them using sustainable techniques, LaTourelle brings a post-industrial ecology to post-socialist material memory. 

The idea was that material itself becomes an artistic position: by combining recycled concrete from the renovations of Haus der Statistik with geopolymer cement, the brick itself becomes a powerful statement-ecologically, socially, and creatively.

Through this lens, each Betonwaves module acts as more than a formal object-it becomes a vessel of transformation. The work stands at the crossroads of reuse and reinvention: architectural rubble is broken down, remixed, and reshaped, telling a story of urban resilience and material rebirth. 

Geopolymer concrete (GPC), while relatively new, presents a crucial shift in how we conceive construction. Made from aluminosilicate-rich waste materials combined with alkaline solutions, GPC requires significantly less energy and water, while boasting superior durability, fire resistance, and environmental performance. In Betonwaves, these technical advances are folded into an aesthetic that speaks of the past-yet points clearly to the future.

Ultimately, Betonwaves is not just an artwork-it is a provocation. It asks: what if demolition wasn’t an end, but a beginning?  

In a time when the construction industry must undergo rapid decarbonisation, Rodney LaTourelle’s Betonwaves reminds us that the materials for change already exist-sometimes quite literally under our feet. 

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