System A
White cement terrazzoThe baseline: no fumes, forgiving. Recycled crushed glass and limestone chips in white Portland cement. Known weakness to test: plastic bonds poorly to cement and is the first thing to pop out under abrasion.
Recycled composite surfacesMaterials R&DA MA|KR materials loop
Terrazzo-style surfaces cast from recycled feedstock, measured sample by sample. The creative can be fun. The core must be honest.
PLYMR is not just a recycled composite surface. It is a material intelligence tool: a way to turn recycled feedstock, quarry material, additives and lab results into visual, testable building decisions.
Right now it is R&D bench work. The goal is not one perfect tile; it is a labelled matrix of variations you can measure against each other.
PLYMR should never imply that an untested recycled composite is code-approved for structural use.
The baseline: no fumes, forgiving. Recycled crushed glass and limestone chips in white Portland cement. Known weakness to test: plastic bonds poorly to cement and is the first thing to pop out under abrasion.
Harder, denser, water-resistant, fast. But the binder is virgin petrochemical resin, which undercuts the circular-content story. Tested as a performance benchmark, not a destination.
Sorted HDPE or PP melted with mineral filler and pressed into a mold. A different material class: thermoplastic, good for objects and tiles, less so for a slab that reads as stone.
From the original PLYMR brief. These come before any recipe, any table, any test.
Buildings are full of PVC: pipes, vinyl flooring, window frames, cable sheathing. Heating it releases hydrogen chloride gas and other toxics. Only melt plastics positively identified as HDPE (code 2) or PP (code 5). When unsure, crush and use cold.
Crushing glass and stone, and cutting or grinding cured pieces, makes silica dust (silicosis). Wet-cut where possible. P2/N95 minimum, P3/FFP3 better. Eye protection always.
Chemical burns. Nitrile gloves, no skin contact, don't kneel in it.
Gloves and ventilation. Repeated sloppy exposure can give you a permanent allergy that ends your ability to work with it.
Ventilated space, respirator, goggles, gloves. No food or drink at the bench.
Melting HDPE or PP: about 180 to 220 °C (HDPE lower, PP higher). Extraction and ventilation are essential; even "safe" plastics off-gas.
Heavily filled epoxy can exotherm and crack if poured thick. Pour in thin lifts.
Recycled glass is the best all-round recycled aggregate, with two hazards: dust and sharp shards.
Not a certification. These materials are for research, education and product development. Architecture claims need traceable batches, lab-tested values, applicable standards and project-specific engineering review.
Plastics, PLYMR recipes, aggregates and benchmark materials from the seed library. These are seed ranges for a simulator prototype. Replace them with lab data before making performance claims.
Tap a column heading to sort by it; tap again to reverse. Ranges sort by their lower figure. Hot = can enter a melt process. Cold = can be used as chip or flake in cement or resin.
Theoretical or indicative values. Cannot pass as architecture-ready.
One-off internal prototype. Capped score.
Repeated in-house tests. Moderate confidence.
Independent lab tests. High confidence.
QA process and repeatable production. Eligible for spec review.
Verified assembly, certified or engineered.
A guessed material should not outrank a verified lower-performing material for professional use. Every PLYMR recipe in the library is marked low confidence.
Which plastics qualify, and for what. Hot processing and cold aggregate are different gates. Start hot processing with known HDPE and PP only; use PET as cold aggregate; exclude PVC entirely.
Temperatures and tensile figures are seed values from the package, not processing instructions.
Where the feedstock comes from. Each stream is registered, sorted at the source and logged by batch.
NYC accepts most rigid plastics in curbside recycling, regardless of number. PLYMR is stricter, because material testing needs known resin, clean feedstock and repeatability. For PLYMR, repeatability beats volume.
If it is not marked or cannot be confidently identified, it cannot enter architecture-mode testing. When in doubt, it does not go into PLYMR feedstock.
Do not mix the first batches. Clean single-resin data is more valuable than volume. Weights and dates are not logged yet.
City rules, as checked for the stream:
The Proving Ground (a build spec, not built) tests materials against sharks, storms and stains. Each playful challenge maps to a real load. The fun and serious modes share the same backend; the difference is presentation.
The engineering side cannot exaggerate the claim. It can help a specifier decide what to test next. It cannot replace a licensed structural engineer, a stamped calculation package, a product approval or project-specific code review.
What each ingredient actually does, and where the circular story breaks.
Every additive is listed with what it puts in and what it gives back.